I’ve already predicted that the Trump campaign will lead to a historic landslide loss for Republicans and cost them both the House and Senate.
Now I think the party is even worse off than I thought before. Trumps is so out of control that even elected officials like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell will end up not only repudiating Trumps words, but his entire candidacy. Many will withdraw their endorsements, leaving the party in tatters.
They thought, somehow, that Trump would be more dignified, careful and “presidential” after securing the nomination. But it seems the opposite. He’s more out of control, and on a bigger stage than ever before.
They will continue, for maybe a few more weeks, to disavow particular Trump statements as he makes them. But sooner or later, they’ll realize he has nothing left, nothing they can stand behind.
And one by one, key elected Republicans will disavow Trump personally, and withdraw their support of his candidacy. The trickle has already started, and will become a fast moving stream if not a flood.
And then the recriminations among the sane and insane wings of the party will be laid bare and there will be no keeping them together, not even with a bare pretense of unity.
You heard it here first! I feel kind of like Woody Harrelson in 2012, with the nutcase theory and prediction that turn out against all common sense to be the correct one.
I think the fragmentation has already happened in large part, but we just don’t see it so clearly because even the internal opposition is mostly doing things like refusing to endorse, as opposed to actively trying to stymie Trump. If he loses, the gloves will come off, and there’ll be a serious restructuring of the party, hopefully not including the wacko ultra-right-wing segment that’s resistant to compromise, common sense or serious thought.
I hope so, though I sense a whiff of wishful thinking.They Deserve to fall apart and stay down until they can come up with something better than obstruction, tax cuts for the wealthy and witch hunts against libruls. But with guys like the Koch Bros. promising to inject some $750 million into elections nationwide this year, well, that’s a lot of glue for the Enemies of the American Government party.
We might be about to see an event similar to the Republican replacement of the Whigs in the 1850s.
I am not sure that we are going to see the party shattered, per se.
The Democrats may undergo some similar issues, (although less extreme).
Clearly, the Tea Party and Evangelical wing is going to face a serious backlash from the Fiscal Responsibility wing of the GOP. However, the Evangelicals have spent 40 years building up their bases on the local levels and even a serious defeat is not going to knock all the individuals in those positions out of their offices. (And while there is a sad overlap among the Evangelicals and the Tea Party, the two groups are not congruent: the Evangelicals have more “boots on the ground” (office holders in precincts) than the Tea Party.) The Fiscal Responsibility group has more people who have made it to higher office, but I am not sure what sort of organization they have to guide the restructuring of the party.
The Democrats’ response to the last time a populist movement brought a crushing loss to the party, in 1972, was to create “super delegates”–people who were long time workers for the party given more weight to avoid being outvoted by new joiners with no history of serving the party. This year, of course, the presence of super delegates was a major point of contention during the run up to the convention. Such a populist movement played a large role in getting Trump the nomination.
I’m wondering if this “intervention” that they were talking about the high-muckety-muck RNC people having with Trump might be the first big sign of that fragmentation. I wonder if it’s literally the “Knock this stupid stuff off, or we’re not going to support you any longer.”
I don’t know what to predict. Trump’s debacle won’t be a repudiation of any of the major extreme right-wing GOP factions: Trump doesn’t represent those factions — he’s not religious, he’s not libertarian, he’s not a neocon bombs-away guy, he’s not a “fiscal conservative/Teabagger”, he’s not even particularly right-wing.
The debacle may split the GOP establishment between those smart enough to repudiate Trump early and those who clung brainlessly to the sinking raft.
IIRC, the Whigs split apart primarily over the specific issue of slavery. What issue would the GOP be splitting over?
If Trump doesn’t shape up (and I seriously doubt that he will), high level Republicans will have to repudiate him or they may well destroy their own careers. The general public can’t be that stupid, right? (I’m not holding my breath though.)
Very true, we shouldn’t assume the current trendline will always continue, but if it does, when it’s all said and done we may have a situation where Trump denounces all incumbent R’s, including those who explicitly endorse him.
Trump flounces off, Cruz seizes the reins, we have at least four years of a sane zealot.
The terrorist wing of the militia movement takes off like gangbusters, and we see a spout of terrorist attacks in this country like we haven’t seen at least since the sixties.
I see something similar playing out but Ryan and McConnell won’t lead the way. I doubt the two have a full spine between the two of them.
No, this is going to take a retired and respected party elder saying something before the dam really breaks. (A former President or spouse perhaps?)
Congressional leaders have too much to lose to lead the way. Ryan and McConnell will be the last ones off the ship as it slips underwater.
This in spades. Evangelicals are so invested in certain issues that there is a good chunk who will vote for Trump just because they think he will appoint the “right” type of justice to SCOTUS. This article makes the pitch to Evangelicals who may be wavering that voting for Trump is the morally proper choice. They are going after those who are considering not voting or going 3rd party because of Trump by arguing that reversing or limiting Roe v Wade, overturning Obergfell and stopping “discrimination” against Christians (among other things) rests on keeping HRC out of the WH.
“OMO, she’s gonna stack the courts with Christian hating Liberals” seems to be the argument they are making.
I think Trump is actually so delusional at the moment that he think’s he can cause the “traitors” eg Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and the others that won’t endorse him to lose their primaries just because he denounces them. He seriously seems to think he can push those that won’t endorse him out of congress / senate and replace them with toadies that will do whatever he says.
I think there is some chance that so many disaffected moderate-conservative Reps are going to join the Dems that the tent will get too big and split the Dems, while the Reps shrink into a minority.
It would be nice if that somehow led to a more liberal party on the left, instead of the moderate Dems we have today.
Hell (as long as I am dreaming out loud), if the three party thing goes on long enough (like more than one election) there could actually be a move toward proportional representation! (I know it’s not very likely, but an idealist can hope…)