If you actually take a look at the criticism by Bush and the like, they don’t generally complain about the harm he has caused and the continuing danger he presents to our country, its about the harm he has caused and may cause to the party. No one is arguing that they shouldn’t put party ahead of country, they just argue about what is best of the party.
Voter suppression is good for the GOP regardless of who is in charge of it, so that question isn’t in play.
More of a snicker for me.
Cheney previously voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (the narrowly tailored bill that is focused mainly on restoring the preclearance process that used to be in the VRA but doing it in a way that is designed to pass the standard in Shelby v. Holder). Only 1 house republican voted for it.
To credit Lisa Murkowski, she cosponsored the same bill when it was introduced in the senate last term. The bill never got a vote, but AFAIK there was no other GOP support.
The GOP is in a bizarre spot for a number of reasons. They have had a long project to be able to choose their own voters in significant enough quantities in enough states that they set up a permanent hold on all aspects of our government. Not only does this clearly go against stated human rights and our countries values, it isn’t doesn’t even benefit their own voters in the long-term. So they have a few ways of convincing their own voters to keep voting Republican:
The first is to downplay the significance of it and try to draw as little scrutiny as possible. This was basically the strategy up until Trump came along. There were some people who made a big deal about illegal voters but it tended to not be a very constant refrain
The second is to openly call the current electoral system illegitimate and rally voters to put this as an issue they are asking their officials for. This is the current strategy most of them have embraced in the wake of 2020.
The third is just to make everyone accept voter suppression as normal. This was probably going to have to be where the GOP settled at some point, but it’s going to be the tactic that the national party establishment embraces very soon if they haven’t already.
Cheney is basically naive in thinking that it’s possible to return to the first strategy. Too many GOP politicians are going to continue to peddle racism and conspiracy theories about elections in order to foster the Trumpists, and the rest of the party is going to accept them. I do think her speaking out and being ousted may be a threat to the GOP’s current plan because it damages the illusion of normalcy the party is trying to create.
Some of the anti-trump Republicans will “stay and fight”. Some will attempt to start a third party (Republican Classic?). Some will go to the Dems and attempt to drag them to (what they regard as) the center. Splitting themselves in this fashion will guarantee that all will be ineffective.
The faction of non Trump Republicans is completely impotent politically and them leaving the party will be inconsequential. In fact the party is likely stronger without them.
It would matter if enough of the (formerly) ‘establishment’ Republicans decided to throw their weight behind centrist Democrats or independents in total repudiation of the Republican party. That’s great in theory, but as a practical matter, I don’t think it’s so easy for them.
If you’re a Wall Street moderate Republican in the corporate world or in the Beltway, you’re concerned about alienating the wrong people. If you’re that Republican, you joined the GOP frat because you want to protect your wealth and the wealth of ‘your people’. So you don’t want to burn bridges. Leaving the GOP, even in its populist iteration, risks burning those bridges. It’s a chance many don’t want to take. It’s not like they’re going to be welcomed with open arms by the party of woke.
Apparently, many people vote for racism. Most politicians care more about being re-elected than anything else. I see no reason for them to change.
But when, dammit??!!?? I’m getting impatient with this timeline.
I think most of the Republicans who are currently complaining are unhappy because Trump’s attempts to subvert democracy doesn’t produce results. Trump calls too much attention to himself.
These Republicans want to go back to the pre-2016 days of quietly subverting democracy.
There are three factors, IMO, that could help disintegrate the GOP:
A small-but-growing grass roots movement of sectors of the GOP that hate the orange menace may coalesce, find each other, mass up and the anti-trump movement may develop into something larger than pipe dreams on the part of hopeful Dems.
By 2024, there will be a massive number of young voters coming up into voting age. Most of these are Latinex, Black, Asian, etc. with a sprinkling of whites that still are having children. These are young people who are aware and politically savvy and have watched what has happened during the Trump administration and aren’t happy about that or what’s happening to the planet they’re going to inherit.
Boomers and BestGen’s are dying off. In four years, many more (especially anti-vax, anti-maskers) will die due to stupidity, old age, obesity, you name it. We’ve already lost a huge swath of BestGens due to Covid in nursing homes and elsewhere. Add to that all the (most likely Rep) idiots that died in 2020 due to not taking any precautions, you have a pretty big dent in the republican constituency.
There may be more factors but it’s slowly leaning away from a GOP victory, no matter how many gerrymanders or anti-voting laws the state-level GOP puts in place.
I remain forever hopeful. BTW, a GOP split would kill them off forever. But don’t tell anyone that, just watch it happen silently from the sidelines. 
I think I’ve got a record on this board of being extremely skeptical of “rising Democratic tide” arguments. Mostly because I’m from Texas, where Democrats have been consoling themselves for years that the changing demographics of the state (i.e. getting younger and more Hispanic) are going to sweep them into power. And Trump was going to put that into overdrive with his demagoguery and racism.
And then last year he increased his percentage of the Hispanic vote – massively so in South Texas. Republicans swept nearly every contested down ballot election. The problem with the demographic argument is that sometimes voters don’t “evolve” the way you think they will, and it assumes the Republicans aren’t going to find ways to win over enough of these new voters to build a majority.
When does the U.S. reach peak geezerhood? The Baby Boomers had strength in numbers, and as that generation has aged the average age of the U.S. population has gone up. As the boomers die off, though, I would expect that average to start coming down. Does anyone know when that average age will reach its maximum and start decreasing, or has it already happened?
By “BestGen”, do you perhaps mean the Greatest Generation (born 1901 to 1927)? They’re pretty much already dead.
Or do you mean the Silent Generation (born 1928-1945)?
Losing the silent generation (what’s left of it) will hurt the pubbies most. About 55% of them gave Trump a favorable rating in 2018, and their support of diversity and proactive government was around 40%. But only 43% of boomers approved of Trump’s performance at that time, and were evenly split about 50/50 over support of diversity and proactive government. All from a 2018 Pew Poll: Generation Z Looks a Lot Like Millennials on Key Social and Political Issues | Pew Research Center
Hopefully the 40+% of Boomers who consider themselves liberal and vote accordingly lived a healthier lifestyle so far compared to conservative ones, so to outlast them.
This. Demographics is not destiny. As voters get older their views change and they can get subsumed into any number of paths that aren’t progressive, aren’t Democratic (big or small ‘D’). Relying on the population to just suddenly become progressive Democrats is a fools errand, a fantasy. I speak as someone who really followed Ruy Teixeira and it seems it’s always the next election when demography will triumph, and it seems this will be true forever.
I agree that’s the motivation, but I think it remains to be seen if they’re right. The Trump approach is riskier but might be more effective unfortunately. If the GOP is actually able to get to the point where it’s acceptable for them to just throw out elections results it would obviously pay off.
I think the plan to increasingly suppress the vote but keep it under wraps was destined to spill over at some point. Trump just accelerated it, but there would have been a backlash, which would force it to evolve in to a partisan battleground where the objective of the GOP was to make voter suppression very open but accepted as normal at some point.
Democrats’ biggest blunder from 2005-2016 was assuming that demography meant inevitable growth for their party - it never did. They’re just fortunate that Republicans made that same calculation in reverse, assuming that immigrants would overwhelm them and their causes. In reality, many immigrants - hell many non-whites, native or not - have the same conservative beliefs that WASPs do, just minus the whole racism thing.
Dozens of Republicans threaten to split from GOP
Dozens, you say? This is just the break Hillary needs!
If Repubs would be just, like, a little less white supremacist - shit they don’t even have to give it up entirely - they would dominate American politics for the next century. They’d be the American Republican Party, single party rule. Mao Tse Trump.
If you take the country as a whole, Democrats generally have held their strong majorities among minority groups, and they’ve definitely turned some red states purplish blue, especially in the southwest. The GOP has relied on turning much whiter rust belt states from blue to purple (at least in terms of presidential politics). The way states populations happen to be distributed, unless the dems can turn Florida and/or Texas blue, demographics alone can’t give them the presidency. And the senate is probably stacked against them in perpetuity.
The biggest threat of the “demographics is destiny” argument is that it can become an excuse for not doing the hard, unglamorous work of politicking. Why should volunteers spend countless days burning up in the Texas heat knocking on doors when it’s in the bag? Why should donors feel urgency when the Democrats are gonna get there no matter what? Why make hard choices about where to focus resources when the Blue Tide will lift all your candidates?
I have never witnessed a party have more confidence, with less reason, than Texas Democrats in this last election. Based on Beto coming within three points of knocking off Cruz and polling that seemed to show that the ascending Democratic coalition was finally at hand, they were convinced that they were going to take a half dozen Congressional seats, win back the Texas House, and knock off John Cornyn. Despite the fact that they hadn’t actually, you know, won anything in the last twenty years.
They stopped block walking – arguably justified by coronavirus, but you can knock on a door and step back six feet. They spread their money around on dozens of candidates rather than honing in on a few key races that were the best pickup opportunities. And they took their traditional voters, particularly South Texas Hispanics, for granted.
Anyway, I’m probably getting off topic. But to get back to the OP, I think the biggest trap the Democrats need to avoid is wishful thinking – whether it’s that demography is destiny or that Republicans will implode. They’ve got to get down in the trenches and work every single day to build the party from the bottom up and understand and connect with their current and potential voters.