People have been saying for a while that the Republican Party collapse from infighting between factions. I’m starting this thread as a repository for stories about Republican infighting.
Charlie Kirk’s murderer may be a radical right-winger who thought Kirk wasn’t ‘right’ enough. This morning I saw this article:
This is not a Charlie Kirk thread. There are other threads that talk about the killer’s motivation. He may have been aligned with the Groypers. Or not. In any case, that’s a discussion for elsewhere. This thread is for examples of the collapse of the Republican party; violence not required.
Yeah, likely not. That was a story that got picked up early on, and it’s likely that his family was extremely conservative (like most of Utah) but there doesn’t seem to be any solid public information one way or the other about the killer, and the bulk of the leaked/indirect public information seems to point to either a confused mashup of ideology or a pro-LGBTQ and anti-fascist one.
On preview: you may want to remove that from your OP then, as it’s likely to poison the well since it’s not factually accurate.
ETA: Mod note came just as I hit submit. Disregard/delete if necessary.
To the OP, I doubt the GOP will eat itself anytime soon. Why would it? It’s in a dominant position and still in the “entrenching power” phase. Once the gerrymandering, court packing, and media silencing is complete, they will enjoy a period of absolute power.
I don’t expect the real infighting to start until (a) Trump dies and there is a fight on who replaces him as the figurehead, (b) economic conditions deteriorate to the point business starts to push back, or (c) a hot war starts and Americans start being killed.
Authoritarian regimes can survive a surprisingly long time as long as those three things don’t happen. And (a) doesn’t have to be a problem as long as Trump names a successor and that successor is popular enough.
I don’t think a handful of crazy people targeting relatively moderate GOP governors (like Ayotte) means very much.
I think it is yet another example of liberal naivete. In fact, I would opine that the Republicans are better at maintaining a unified front than the Democrats.
As a general matter, once an authoritarian regime gets settled, the in-fighting goes on mostly behind closed doors.
What is different today is there is still the rump of the old pre-trump GOP out there. Some of whom won’t go quietly. But most of whom are eyeing retirement due to both age and frustration.
As a separate matter, this is also the first hard authoritarian takeover of a nominally democratic country during the social media / political celebrity era.
The various players and factions within GOP derive a lot of their internal power from their ability to rouse the rabble via posts & vids & speeches and such. So we can expect the prominent individuals and factions to fight a very public fight in the media and public consciousness in addition to whatever vicious knife-fighting is taking place behind closed doors.
That will be something new and different.
But they’ll all still be all about RW authoritarianism all the time. The splitism will just be about which celebrity baddie gets how much of the spoils from which part of Democracy’s carcass.
IMO @Jasmine is correct. The thing formerly known as “the GOP” may become unrecognizably reorganized. IOW a different creature hiding inside in a raggedy torn elephant suit.
But the idea that reactionary RW authoritarianism is heading for imminent collapse due to its inherent contradictions and general badness for public welfare is pure wishful fantasy. It took diligent effort over 30-40 years to whip the public into this frenzy. It’ll take the same 30 or 40 years of experiencing the horrors first hand to wind them (or their grandkids) back down.
It’s been 46 years since the Shah was deposed by the Ayatollah. A hefty fraction of Iranian citizens are still very much in favor of their Islamic dictatorship. Many more aren’t, but once an authoritarian regime is entrenched, removing them takes a supermajority more like 90% of the public willing to embrace revolutionary violence, not merely 40% willing to vote against the regime while 30% sit out. Tall order.
I’m not so sure about a collapse, but the GOP has been nibbling on itself for a while now. Much of the old guard Republicans have been purged for not being sufficiently loyal to Trump with diehard conservatives like Liz Cheney branded as Republicans in Name Only (RINOs). We saw some infighting in the lead up to the 2024 election when Trump torpedoed legislation that would have gotten the GOP most of what they wanted in regards to immigration. I won’t be surprised if at some point we see a purge where Democrats and insufficiently loyal Republicans are arrested. Maybe televised like the Ba’athist purge in 1979.
I agree with the majority of responses that while there may be some infighting, probably more visible than usual, I doubt it will rise to the level of crippling the GOP. They’re just too good at falling in line.
When Trump dies, though… that will be a bloodbath.
However, I do enjoy stories of these jackwagons backstabbing each other, so while I don’t think it’ll amount to much, I’m happy to follow along.
IMHO this is where things will become difficult for the GOP. From what I’ve seen of Trump, he probably doesn’t care who his successor will be. I don’t see him saying something like saying “I picked JD Vance as my POTUS, and once I’m retired he’s the new leader of the MAGA movement”. Even if he does say it, he isn’t going to attack other Republicans that challenge Vance to be the successor. Trump loves being the king, but he has no interest in being a king maker. Especially if he is a well loved, at least by the MAGA base, king emeritus (which is likely to be the case after the 2028 election) as opposed to a deposed king who has someone he wants to get revenge on.
I find your contention that trump won’t win the 2028 election to be charmingly quaint. Whatever obstacles there may be are mere paper. With no one to enforce them, paper loses to people every time.
trump will die as leader of the USA. Whether that death is before or after 2028 I cannot say.
Quite right. Things may well get worse. Much worse.
The populist king-worship is centered on trump personally and that will be hard to replicate in his absence.
But the whipped up hatred, love of violence and intimidation, etc., doesn’t need a charismatic leader or even populist policies. All it needs is a currupt executive and a violent police state hell-bent on preserving its personal privilege, all the way down to the street cops. And some commercial propagandists who can monetize that conjured hate as clicks and views and merch sales and donations and tithes and …
Personally I thought it was pretty telling that two of the three other Republicans who defected to side with Thomas Massie in demanding the full release of the Epstein files were Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert.
They were two of the most feral and rabid Trump supporters last time around, and if they’re willing to break ranks over this, what else is going on that we don’t see?
