Hey! Ouch! Dammit, stop throwing those rocks at me!
Okay, seriously, I imagine many people are horrified at the thought of starting to think about the next Presidential election before we’re even completed this one. I apologize but I am wondering where the Republicans will go after 2016.
I specify the Republicans because the Democrats probably are not going to make any significant course changes. Unless current trends turn sharply, the Democrats will be basing their plans around re-electing Clinton in 2020.
The Republicans, on the other hand, will have to look at the 2016 campaign and concede that mistakes were made. Here are some of my predictions:
A change in primary procedures: I think this is a given. The party leaders are going to want to make it impossible for somebody to repeat what Trump did. They’re going to rewrite the rules so they have a quiet but effective veto over a candidate if they don’t like who’s winning the primaries.
Reconciliation and rehabilitation of Trump: This one is less obvious. In the immediate aftermath of a Republican defeat there’s going to be an urge to vilify Trump. But I think this will turn around within a few months. Because in the long run it’s only going to hurt the party’s reputation if they keep talking about what an idiot they chose as their candidate. So at some point, I think there will be a change and pundits will start selling the line that Trump wasn’t really as bad as people think. They’ll claim that he was just “controversial” and “outspoken” and a victim of the liberal media. This will make it possible to begin arguing that President Clinton is worse than Trump would have been.
Grooming the Chosen One: While they might reconcile in public, Trump will get all the blame behind the scenes. The Republican party leaders will one again convince themselves that the problem was they didn’t give the voters what they really want: A True Conservative. (Once again ignoring the evidence of who the voters actually vote for.) With the primary system under their control, the party leaders will decide that this time they need to choose a True Conservative and make him the heir apparent, who everyone will support in 2020 against Clinton. The only question is who will fill the position? A lot of potential conservative standard bearers who looked good on paper (Bachmann, Brownback, Guiliani, Huckabee, Jindal, Palin, Perry, Rubio, Santorum, Tancredo, Walker) have shown they can’t connect with the voters. Ryan’s a possibility or maybe they’ll go with an unknown (in other words, a Trump they can control).
This is not what Republican party leaders think, this is what the Republican party base thinks. Republican party leaders want nothing to do with “true conservatives”, that’s meat for the rubes. What Republican party leaders want is a different base.
I daresay there’s going to be an urge among Trump supporters to vilify Republican leadership, but nothing will happen - his supporters are too disorganized and lacking of sufficient attention spans.
You’re saying the leaders of the Republican party didn’t want all the conservative candidates they’ve had for the last thirty years? That they were forced upon them by the masses?
No, I feel there will be a period of throwing blame around and pointing fingers at each other. I figure things will settle down around the Inauguration.
The republican party is hostage to about 10-20 million voters who are extreme right who elect people like Trump. I’m sure they will try to find a way to reduce their impact, but I’m not sure how. Maybe stronger barriers to entry to run for president on the GOP side. The last few elections both sides have had people who were obviously just running to build up their name, or to get airtime, etc. only a small minority seemed to be running because they thought they would win.
So far higher barriers to entry to run is one thing.
I really don’t know what the GOP can do. They can’t balance their base of 20 million far right xenophobes with a nation becoming more and more multicultural.
I feel twenty million is a significant overestimate of the number of voters who are far right xenophobes. That would be around one out of every seven voters. I feel the number is far smaller - maybe one in twenty or around five percent of voters.
The problem with the Republicans seem to be it’s letting its five percent fringe have too much control. The ten percent insist on a right wing candidate and then the party has to convince another forty-six percent to go along with this fringe choice in order to win the general election. The Republicans instead should be letting the more moderate forty-six percent choose their candidate and then working on convincing the five percent fringe to join in.
You’re talking about making a massive GOTV effort during the primaries. That’s one heavy lift.
The moderate middle - which I believe makes up at least 60% of the electorate as a whole - just doesn’t come out during primaries. Instead it’s the motivated, passionately crazy voters who do. Changing that is going to be difficult.
Assuming Trump loses, the 2020 race will be a very interesting choice: you figure Rubio, Cruz, Ryan, Haley, and Pence are sure things.
The GOP hopefully won’t be dumb enough to change the primary process. The real issue is too many frontrunners. Chances are they’ll want to crown a chosen one, probably Ryan or Haley, and urge all the other powerful players off the board. Cruz won’t be buying, so he’s in anyway. Rubio will probably bide his time since he’s got a lot of it. Pence, who knows?
Of course, this also depends on Clinton’s performance in office. If she does the way she usually does, she’ll enjoy a 60% rating and powerful Republicans will be scared off, so they’ll just let Cruz have his damn nomination and also his damn 40 state loss. Yay Cruz!
That would then leave someone like Ryan or Rubio(who would be ready by then, maybe?) or Haley to face the Democratic nominee in 2024, who if Democrats are smart will be Tim Kaine, and if they are not so smart will be someone exciting who will go down in exciting fashion.
Assuming a Hillary win, I fearlessly predict the following:
1- Republican congressional leaders will meet in the evening of Jan 20, 2017 and vow to oppose everything that President Clinton will propose.
2- Hillary will make her own choice for Scalia’s seat in late January, Republicans will refuse to consider it on the grounds that the election is less than four years away.
3- Donald Trump will be persona non grata among Republicans and, desperate for media attention, begins to tweet photos of his genitalia.
4- Christine O’Donnell will launch her campaign with the slogan “I am not a witch, Hillary is”.
5- Republicans introduce superdelegates to their convention in an attempt to prevent a Trump II.
6- After a bruising primary debate season involving 45 candidates, Republicans nominate Scott Baio.
It should be no secret that the times will not be kind to the GOP if they don’t revamp their strategy. The country is growing more secular, more urban and less white. Don’t get me confused, all of these things are beneficial for our country moving forward. Looking at the country’s opinion on social issues we have never leaned more progressively, again for the better.
In 2020 the only way Republicans can turn things around should Trump get destroyed (which he will if doesn’t change his abrasive stance on, well, everything,) is if the party re-asserts itself as the party of personal responsibility.
If they can do this they have a middling to fair shot at winning the 1600 Pennsylvania sweepstakes in four year’s time. However, if the student debt bubble collapses or we are thrust into a war this chance goes up dramatically. If not - Hillary is re-elected in a landslide worse than the one we are gearing up for.
I say this as a registered Republican, the presidency can not be won on the votes of bigots and bible-thumpers.
“Do we believe that the goal of government is to promote equal opportunity for all Americans to make the most of their lives? Or, do we now believe that government’s role is to equalize the results of peoples lives?” - Your next (next) president.
The problem is that the bigots and bible thumpers don’t just disappear because you want them to. The GOP establishment has learned they can no longer control the monster they created. They wish they could ditch those guys and embrace policies like immigration reform or a more gay tolerant stance, but the base simply will not allow them to. Donald Trump is going to have more effect on who the 2020 nominee is going to be than anyone else.
I agree with you, though I am optimistic that the greatest reason for his popularity is his anti-establishment persona, rather than his fear of brown people and it is the former that resonates more thoroughly.
Now, I was just thinking about 2020. In a silly sort of way (we haven’t gotten through 2016 elections yet). If Clinton wins 2016, then that’s three terms of the same party in the presidency. There haven’t been four since FDR/Truman, right?
The Supreme Court - what will it look like then? How many that are there now will still be there?
And, of course, the census and new congressional districts.