# Is there likely to be a long term divide among Republicans over supporting Trump?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-likely-to-be-a-long-term-divide-among-republicans-over-supporting-trump/770508>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [November 3, 2016, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-likely-to-be-a-long-term-divide-among-republicans-over-supporting-trump/770508 "2016-11-03T06:10:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2016, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-likely-to-be-a-long-term-divide-among-republicans-over-supporting-trump/770508/21 "2016-11-03T18:49:40Z")

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Republicans have been seriously divided for a long time and Democrats have some divides too. There’s been a division in the GOP since I was a kid about traditional conservatism and pragmatism. Some Republicans thought Nixon was a liberal, Reagan supported a new conservative movement focused on cultural issues that attracted the religious right and sidelined the old Northeastern Republican economy gang. Bush the First and Second took the GOP into wars wrecking their long time complaints about paying for the Democrat’s wars. And Jr. also screwed up everything so bad the Tea Party emerged to just whine and complain about all these issues while disregarding all the old factions. Trump took the populist route and pointed out how useless the Republican leadership has been, and worse exposed their real philosophy that they’d been trying to hide. I don’t think the GOP has had a coherent message since before FDR, and I’d be surprised if they could get one again. The Democrats haven’t fared any better though. I hope both parties become so divided that they’ll lose their influence and at least go back to the time of local party philosophy instead of trying to maintain their dogma at a national level.

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**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-likely-to-be-a-long-term-divide-among-republicans-over-supporting-trump/770508/22 "2016-11-04T03:35:17Z")

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> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> I wasn’t talking so much about an ideological divide over the future of the Republican Party. I was thinking more about throwing blame around. One group saying _“You guys are to blame for Clinton being President. Trump could have won if you had supported him.”_ and the other group saying _“You guys are to blame for us losing Congress. Trump was going to lose either way but the rest of us didn’t have to lose with him.”_

Oh, there will be that, certainly. It might even be true. Trump could very well lose because Republicans don’t come home to him in sufficient numbers, or Republican turnout is depressed. So many high profile Republicans are writing in other candidates, and doing so publicly. THat’s gotta influence at least some votes. David French in particular has gotten tons of death threats.

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