# Odds of GOP schism / new party emergence if Trump elected? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [March 1, 2016, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682 "2016-03-01T21:16:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/21 "2016-03-01T23:28:10Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, that’s for reasons partly political-cultural but mainly mechanical: At the federal and state levels, we have a single-member-district, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system for electing legislators. That tends to freeze out third parties (and force everyone who wants to participate seriously into one of two “big tent” parties) – tends to; Canada has a similar system and the New Democratic Party has been a strong third party for decades, though it has never won control of the national government; likewise with the Liberal Democrats in Britain. But, I’m sure the partisan lineup would be very different in every one of these countries if we/they had [proportional representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation) (which I will continue to plug at every opportunity, mainly because most Americans don’t even seem to know what the phrase means). I prefer a ranked voting system over proportional representation. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/22 "2016-03-01T23:30:24Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > I certainly wouldn’t rule anything out, but I’m pretty skeptical of the idea that Trump is going to turn into either a brutal fascist or suddenly re-emerge as a hardcore liberal as pretty farfetched. What is more likely than either is that he would prove to be a clueless, blundering incompetent – and too arrogant to listen much to better-informed advisers. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/23 "2016-03-01T23:32:04Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > I prefer a ranked voting system over proportional representation. They’re not incompatible – we could use IRV to fill single executive offices and PR to elect multimember legislative bodies. We would end up seeing more third-partisans (couldn’t be fewer) in both. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/24 "2016-03-01T23:34:07Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > 0% chance. If Trump is their nominee and loses they’ll just blame him. If he wins they were supporting him the whole time. Agree. The last couple of election cycles where the Republicans lost, afterward I heard memes along the lines of “The candidate was not conservative _enough_”. If they lose this one, will they still be saying that? _Can_ they still say that? If they win, then those who said that the last two times will have been correct! I also have conservative friends who are gagging at their prospective choices, and would welcome the chance to participate in a party with conservative financial platforms and liberal social ones, not ruled by the religious, pseudo-religious, and haters. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/25 "2016-03-01T23:35:05Z")
It’s easy to blame Trump’s lack of conservatism. He’s not a conservative, never has been. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/26 "2016-03-01T23:37:09Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Depends also on how regional differences shake out. There would be two parties everywhere, but they might not be the same two parties, or they might align with the GOP banner but call themselves something else as well as the Progressives did in the Midwest at one time. Come to think of it, the Dems in Minnesota are known as the [Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Democratic%E2%80%93Farmer%E2%80%93Labor_Party), owing to a merger with a social-democratic third party in 1944. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/27 "2016-03-01T23:40:09Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What is more likely than either is that he would prove to be a clueless, blundering incompetent – and too arrogant to listen much to better-informed advisers. Fortunately, Trump would also be a rather politically ineffectual POTUS for the same reasons. But, nevertheless, he **would** have access to the nuclear launch codes . . . ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/28 "2016-03-01T23:40:12Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > “Republican Party” is one hell of a high-recognition brand name; the sane elements would make an enormous sacrifice in giving it up. Wait…there are still sane elements in the GOP? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/29 "2016-03-01T23:41:37Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > It’s easy to blame Trump’s lack of conservatism. He’s not a conservative, never has been. But, he won’t **lose** because he is not conservative enough. Nor will he lose because he is too conservative. He will lose because he is, personally, a person impossible for the majority to take seriously as a presidential prospect. I hope. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/30 "2016-03-01T23:43:59Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Wait…there are still sane elements in the GOP? Well, the OP assumes so, at least. Let’s say we’re using comparative values of “sane.” The Establishment/[Very Serious People](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Very_serious_people) wing of the GOP is saner than the theocons and paleocons and Tea Partiers. Usually wrong, but not living-in-an-alternate-reality wrong. ---
**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:** [March 1, 2016, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/31 "2016-03-01T23:44:20Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > I also have conservative friends who are gagging at their prospective choices, and would welcome the chance to participate in a party with conservative financial platforms and liberal social ones, not ruled by the religious, pseudo-religious, and haters. I think that’s what Trump wants to be. He is not conservative though, the GOP knows it, and his followers know it, they don’t believe in the conservative message any more even if they consider themselves personally conservative. What Trump actually is and what he will be is anyone’s guess though, I doubt he even knows. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/32 "2016-03-01T23:59:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But, he won’t **lose** because he is not conservative enough. Nor will he lose because he is too conservative. He will lose because he is, personally, a person impossible for the majority to take seriously as a presidential prospect. > > I hope. He won’t lose because he’s not conservative, but he might win because he’s not conservative. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/33 "2016-03-02T00:00:15Z")
The Republican coalition has been straining at its own contradictions for some time. For example, the Tea Party had some libertarian elements in it, and those people are generally secular. But it also has evangelical christians who have been pretty successful at running the libertarians off the field. The party has more than its share of nativist, close-the-borders types (the Pat Buchanan/Ross Perot wing), but it also has a lot of open border free trade types. It has a lot of pro-business or pro-market fiscal conservatives, but it also has religious social conservatives who don’t really care about economic issues, or if they do they span the gamut from left-to-right. Half the party is mostly animated by abortion, gay marriage and other social issues, while the other half are actively pro-choice and pro gay marriage. The things that sort of tied them together were a belief in lower taxes and lower regulations, a strong military, gun rights, and a sense that the federal government has vastly outstripped its powers as enumerated in the constitution. But they won the gun issue, and it stopped being a focus. The various failures of foreign policy have soured them on interventionism, and they don’t see any Republican leaders seriously willing to take on Washington (with the exception perhaps of Ted Cruz, but no one thinks he’d be successful). Now they’re voting in frustration for a buffoon. The party has been kind of adrift since the cold war ended and broke the one serious thread tying it all together. The rise of Trump could easily shatter what’s left - except that they have nowhere else to go, since the other remaining thread is that they tend to really dislike Democrats. The Democrats should be able to crush them this year. If they can’t, that says something equally damaging about the direction of the Democratic party - it may have gone too far to the left to be able to pick up many votes from disaffected Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/34 "2016-03-02T00:04:10Z")
Good post. I think that lately it’s been more culture tying the party together. We represent “real America” while the other guys represent the troop-hating, treehugging, babykilling, big government hippies. The end result is that a candidate who has no conservative principles but articulates that rage really well is now the frontrunner for the party’s nomination. And the thing is, even as someone who has kinda bought into the us vs. them mentality a little, I can’t really get on board with this. I cannot support a party whose only shared principle is hatred for the other side. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/35 "2016-03-02T00:12:21Z")
I hear you. Too bad the Democrats have veered so sharply to the left, because they’d otherwise have a golden opportunity to pick up some disaffected Republicans and really build a stronger party. But so long as the social justice mob is running things on the left, that ain’t gonna happen. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/36 "2016-03-02T00:15:28Z")
Not this cycle, but if the Trump marriage gets ugly, there will be votes to be had and I think the party would be pretty welcoming. They’ve always been happy to kick the hippies to the curb when it suits them. After all, we all love Wall Street, don’t we?🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/37 "2016-03-02T00:21:11Z")
I’m not so sure. The cold war was really the force that caused the two sides to intermingle and live with each other. ‘Scoop Jackson’ Democrats would side with Republicans, and young libertarian-leaning Republicans would often side with Democrats when it came to cold war policy. That forced them all to work together and to learn to compromise. Since the cold war ended, the two parties have been slowly drifting into their own corners and becoming more partisan and exclusionary. They lost the only common ground they had. There was a brief respite immediately after 9/11, then things got even uglier. I’m not sure I see anything in the current environment that would reverse that trend. Actually, I can see one: If Hillary is elected and goes back to being an uber-Hawk like she and her husband have generally been, I could see her going to the Republicans to support her foreign policy, and she’s the type of wheeling/dealing politician who would be willing to throw a few left-wing principles under the bus to get what she wants. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/38 "2016-03-02T00:38:19Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I hear you. Too bad the Democrats have veered so sharply to the left. Seriously? Sam, don’t be an idiot. You think Obama is a leftist? For fucking real? Obama is the first conservative president we’ve elected since Eisenhower. It’s not radical left wing bluster to take a look at the structure of the economy and realize that all the economic growth in America over the last 40 years has gone exclusively to the top 10% of income earners. Back in the 50s and 60s and 70s when the economy grew working class and middle class wages grew. That’s over, wages for working class people have fallen, and middle class wages have stagnated. Why is that? It’s one thing if you keep getting the same percentage of an ever growing pie. It’s another when one guy’s slice of pie grows enormously, while your slice and the slices of everyone else you know stays the same, or shrinks. and the notion that a single payer health insurance system is a radical extreme left wing fantasy is, well, it’s something. Somehow every other country on Earth manages to pay half as much for health care and get better aggregate outcomes, but such a system would fail miserably in America. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/39 "2016-03-02T00:40:45Z")
Its not possible as long as they’ve got a good thing going in Congress. So long as they can still consistently get over 50% in the House and/or Senate, it will be too messy to give all that power up for the slight chance of electing a president. I think the GOP calculation now has shifted to keeping control of Congress rather than electing a president. Also, there’s only 1 president. There are hundreds of Congressmen. I don’t see a substantial shift in the selfishness of these guys to be willing to lose their seats in exchange for a president from their party. It won’t do them individually any good ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682/40 "2016-03-02T00:46:48Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Seriously? Sam, don’t be an idiot. You think Obama is a leftist? For fucking real? I think he’s referring more to what’s going on in the Democratic primary. Obama may not be a leftist, but he’s got leftists riled up and thinking they can finally take the country. > [@](#): > > and the notion that a single payer health insurance system is a radical extreme left wing fantasy is, well, it’s something. Somehow every other country on Earth manages to pay half as much for health care and get better aggregate outcomes, but such a system would fail miserably in America. You’re confusing UHC for single payer. Single payer is not the international norm, multi payer is. In Switzerland they rejected single payer very recently by a huge margin. ACA, for better or for worse, is the basis of our UHC system, should we achieve it. Multi-payer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odds-of-gop-schism-new-party-emergence-if-trump-elected/747682.md?page=3)