He only needs to run, grift, and lose once. In 2024. By 2028 he’ll be too old and infirm. I hope.
Biden is eighty. Trump similar. I think age can bring wisdom, but obviously many other concerns as well. It should be a factor in picking the best potential choices.
Aside, I always think of that scene from Johnny English, where Atkinson’s character opts to open a door rather than scale the fence.
“With age comes wisdom”
Maybe they’ll both realize they’re too old for this shit…
~Max
Not likely.
Chuck Grassley just won another appointment to the senate in Iowa. He is (as of this post) 89 years old.
Power seems a drug that is difficult to give up.
Eventually the donations would dry up. But Trump’s seventy-six years old. I’m pretty sure he can keep the scam going in for the rest of his lifetime.
Not that hard, really. In NY when I was working on campaigns there were 4 parties, and the minority ones commonly endorsed major party candidates of interest to them, and ran their own if not. A Trump party could endorse Trumpist Republican candidates who won their primaries and run those who lost. Not that it would matter that much.
Or they could take over an existing party, as has been mentioned.
I doubt it will happen, being too much work for Trump, but it is feasible.
This matches my thinking. It much more his MO than running third party
This assumes that the GOP has any actual control over its strategy and candidates. In order to make it into office all GOP members first have to win the primary. This primary is populated almost entirely of rabid right wingers who have had their amygdala regularly stroked by non pushes of fear and hate from right wing media. This media doesn’t care at all about the success or failure of the GOP party as a whole all they care about is attracting viewers with ever increasing dosages of shock and outrage, who have become jaded by the doses they were sending the year before.
So even if it was clear that the GOP would never win a presidency or a congressional majority without moderating their message, they still wouldn’t have to pander to the far right
It worked for Lyndon Larouche, didn’t it?
Offer him clemency to turn on every other Republican who assisted in his crimes. Prosecute a new one every week. Hell, we could even give him a new TV show, The Snitch Bitch, in which he spills his guts once a week.
Oh, there were a few holdovers, or throwbacks that paid slightly more than lip service to those ideas in the second time frame, but yeah, much older style conservatives, probably trying to throw in a a bit of Bush’s ‘compassionate conservatism’ as mentioned upthread as well. The point was that such a candidate could appeal, especially if / when infighting became inevitable amongst a more dominant (D) party, in which the conservative wing of said party was uncomfortable with the more aggressive progressives.
It’s a long term pivot, and honestly, I don’t think there’s enough backbone left in the majority of the (R) party to make it happen, but it’s a plausible solution to remaining as a viable ‘loyal opposition’ type if the MAGA are bound and determined to keep shifting ever-further right and into the crazy.
I don’t believe they’re capable of pivoting unless and until the base gives up on Donald. That will never happen. The MAGA base will be whining about 2020 even after the 2056 election, just as current day Republicans are still whining about Robert Bork.
What do you do when you’re incapable of pivoting? You double down. Say your candidates lost because they weren’t MAGA enough, or that the election was stolen. Never admit fault, never change course. McCarthy and McConnell both know full well this is madness, but they have no choice but to stay the course.
I really hate the notion that these guys “Have no choice”. Of course they have a choice.
You say they’re “incapable of pivoting”, but that’s not correct. Maybe their voters are incapable of pivoting, but these guys sure can, hell we see them pivot all the time when they think it’s to their advantage (See: Never Trump; Appointing to the Supreme Court during an election year).
The problem is, they don’t want to make the choice that’s available to them, which is to admit that pandering to the worst elements of their voting base was a mistake, and that they need to stop pandering to these people, even if that costs them elections for the next ten years, or even more. That’s a choice they could make, and should make. That they won’t make that choice is all on them. Saying they “Don’t have a choice” absolves them of any moral blame for the mess they created.
One of the things I could see, building off my own earlier analysis, is an actual fragmentation of the current 2 party situation into at least 4 parties, each still grouped under two major tentpoles for coalition fighting against each other. Not that this isn’t already pretty much a thing, but perhaps more formal going forward.
Under the (D) heading, we’d have the Progressives (the more leftward portion of the existing (D) party, including the Greens) and the Centrists (a center left party).
Under the (R) heading, we’d have the Conservatives (a center right party), and the Great American Party (former MAGAs, far right and probably isolationist about not spending anything outside the US).
Again, we aren’t exactly far from that right now, just different levels of cohesion between the wings and mostly still standing under the bigger umbrella, rather than multiple smaller ones.
Yes, because if there’s one thing the modern Republican party stands for, it’s their devotion to the principle of fair and open elections.
The leaders of the party have two years to “fix” the primary system so they can control the outcomes of the primaries. They won’t even have to waste time; they can just use their existing plans and cross out the parts where it says general election and write in primary election.
They’re going to make sure they don’t have a Trump problem in the future. The party leaders will choose an obedient and safe nominee and then the primary system will just be used to put a public affirmation on the choice they made.
Of course my views carry little weight. But that is no reason the Republican Party has to accept they have absolutely no role in its strategy or future. Of course they do have choices and saying otherwise is not taking responsibility. They can talk about being the adults in the room and whatnot, but this means more integrity and actual policy alternatives - less simply taking orders from any media, magnate, muckraker or miscellaneous swamp thing. If the Party genuinely cannot change or influence anything, what will eventually force them to do so? It is easier to make people angry then to address substantial issues. So what?
How formal? The moment any candidate replaced “R” or “D” with anything else, they all but guarantee a loss in the next election cycle. There aren’t many representatives in either chamber popular enough to get re-elected without the support of their party.
And if we’re not talking about actual new parties, we’re just describing existing caucuses.
I agree it isn’t likely to happen, but if (and it’s a huge if) Trump shears off a chunk of the (R) to form the aforementioned Great America Party (GAP) from the GOP due to being denied the (R) nomination, it could create a vehicle that outlasts him as a political force. Again, very UNlikely, and they’d probably rejoin the (R) general population after his death even if it happens.
But if there is such fragmentation, and the (D) becomes hyper dominant briefly as a result, I fully expect a fracture along the lines earlier among the (D) crowd.
Still, all in all, it’s an edge case scenario.
I think Trump will be considered an aberration in 50 years. The Republican Party blindly followed Trump off a cliff and now has to figure out how to appeal to more voters than just Trump followers, or it will continue to underperform in elections.
It’s been done before. Johnson slaughtered Goldwater in 1964, but Nixon and Reagan were able to win back the presidency only a few years later. Goldwater was no Trump, but he was extremely conservative, and that turned off a lot of voters.
The far-right can’t sustain itself any more than the far-left in national elections. Centralist candidates can unite the country by pulling voters from both sides. The GOP has to figure out how to get back to that kind of strategy from where it is today.
You mean they should vote for RINOs?? It sure is quite a corner they’ve painted themselves into.
Is Liz Chaney a RINO? I certainly wouldn’t consider her a Democrat based on her voting record. Is anyone in the Republican Party who disagrees with Trump a RINO? If yes, the party needs to move toward RINOs and away from MAGAs to win elections again, IMHO.
It boils down to when Trump is no longer the Republican party leader. It may take a few more election cycles for that to happen.