True, but what if Trump’s popularity with the base gets a lot of the mainstream conservatives replaced with Tom Tancredo types?
BTW, are Canada’s Conservatives internally divided like the GOP is?
If that were the case, Sanders would be beating Clinton in a walk and the Congressional Progressive Caucus would make up most of the Democratic Caucus. The neoliberal globalizing pro-Wall-Street DLC wing of the party is still very much dominant, and not even in any meaningful comparative sense “left.”
Then why is Clinton taking such leftist positions lately on some issues? She’s clearly feeling the heat from that flank.
I mean, we could assume that she’ll abandon those positions and go full on DLC in the general, but that might be too much even for her.
The ground is shifting, but the left-progressives have a ways to go yet before they’re as big a deal in the Democratic Party as the Tea Party is in the GOP. If they do get there, that could be Sanders’ “political revolution,” or at least the start of it; but it won’t start this year.
No question, but the Blue Dogs have almost been rendered extinct and the progressives have been unafraid to turn their fire onto reliable liberals who just disagree with them a little on foreign policy. It’s getting pretty rough for non-progressives in that party.
In this analysis, is Obama a progressive or reliable liberal?
Obama is a progressive who is smart enough to feel constrained by political realities.
That would make him a lot smarter than Sanders, which I don’t buy.
I doubt it. The GOP has won the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections. They control the majority of the countries governorships and state houses. Why should they change?
You can have a party with a very loud and influential know-nothing branch and still win tons of federal, state and local elections. The GOP has no incentive to change. The only election they tend to lose due to their behavior is the presidency. They have lost the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 presidential elections (soon to be 6 of the last 7). Other than that a party with a constantly growing branch of dogmatic know-nothings is paying dividends on almost every other race they enter.
Trust me. If the R&Ds didn’t put up so many roadblocks to new parties, I would have started one already.
And what was Stephen Harper? 
There is no chance of a GOP schism. Should Trump win, they will fall in line and lick his boots. They love power too much to yield it on principle.
Nope. They went through a decade long shake-up following the 1993 election, when the old PC party fractured into Reform, Bloc québécois and a 2 MP PC rump. After that 1993 fracture, conservatives spent 10 years trying to “Unite the Right”, which finally happened with the new Conservative Party in 2004. By that time, the Red Tories had left - some joined the Liberals, some (like former Prime Minister Clark) simply refused to join the new Conservative Party.
Then they spent nine years in power under PM Harper (from 2006 to 2015), until they lost the election last fall. They’re going through the usual post-mortem wailings now of a party that lost government, but they’re not badly fractured internally.
This is really the punch line.
The Presidency is a powerful position. But controlling Congress and 40 statehouses is far more powerful. All of us here are chewing the fat & burning up a lot of electrons about the Presidential contest when the one that matters is the one for Congress. All 460ish of them.
The thing that most worries me about the rise of the rejectionist wing is that if Trump does well in the primaries and the general, even of he doesn’t win, in 2018 we’ll see a lot of new rejectionist Congressmen.
If you think working with the Tea Party is hard, wait until they’re joined by a new equally large contingent of Congressmen dedicated to pandering to the folks who’re supporting Trump today. These Congressmen will emerge in 2018 regardless of whether Trump is then President or Trump has since turned his back on politics completely. If the former there’ll just be a lot more of them.
who would actually be this “new party’s” constituency? The Cocktail Party? (instead of the Tea Party. This group is aka the Country Club Republicans, who wouldn’t otherwise let a guy like Rubio in otherwise but for Trump)
A very powerful group in money, connections and influence – but not numerous enough to be powerful electorally all by themselves. They need the yahoos to win anything.
The key is if the major parties leave a wide ideological space open. If the Democratic Party looks like Sanders and WArren want it to and the GOP looks the way Trump wants it, then 50 million Americans or more have no one to support.
More likely though, the Democrats will take advantage and do the exact opposite of what the Sanders/Warren wing wants. Historically the Democrats have always seen themselves more as a party of disparate groups united more by dislike for the Republicans than any coherent ideological coalition. So the Democrats will probably just incorporate the non-Trump Republicans and be a rather unwieldy majority power, with conservatives and liberals fighting from within. Much as it was in the Democratic Party’s pre-New Deal days.
Eat a dick.
Not often I get one this clean cut.
Warning issued. Don’t do it again.