Odds of GOP schism / new party emergence if Trump elected?

[DSeid]

@LSLGuy

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. …

This is where though they feel that Trump threatens them: his impact on their ability to hold Congress and State legislatures by his hostile takeover of their brand. They had already had trouble enough with revolt from the overlapping groups of hardcore Conservatives of differing stripes and TP elements what with having safe and relatively mainstream Republicans primaried, and with insurgent groups within Congress. Trump takes that long growing pimple and pops it leaving pus on the mirror and a bleeding red blemish that cannot just be powdered over. Having any mainstream GOP control over what happens in Congress? Gone. Heck can they even be called mainstream at that point. The name owns Congress but the name consists of such disparate interests that split or not they might as well be opposing parties in terms of functioning and use of the power that is control of Congress.

[YogSothoth]

@Jonathan_Chance

Not often I get one this clean cut.

Warning issued. Don’t do it again.

Maybe he just meant he was looking famished and that a hot dog would be a good choice of dinner for the night?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19149996&postcount=5

Ana Hedonia reminds us that all the candidates promised to support Trump if he is the nominee.

[JKellyMap]

@Wesley_Clark

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.

Exactly. Any energy I have for canvassing I’ll do on behalf of Russ Feingold, not Hillary Clinton.

[Northern_Piper]

@BrainGlutton

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;

The NDP was actually the Official Opposition from 2011 to 2015; the Liberals were third party during that Parliament.

[Sam_Stone]

@BrainGlutton

BTW, are Canada’s Conservatives internally divided like the GOP is?

Things seem somewhat quiet on the federal Conservative front. I think they’re regrouping.

Here in Alberta, our electorate on the right cracked up basically along the same fault lines as the Republican crack-up. Business conservatives, social conservatives, and libertarian conservatives went their own way, and the bad blood between them caused them to vote for the NDP in protest. No one thought the NDP would get a majority, making them a ‘safe’ protest vote. As it turns out, a few too many thought that way, and we elected an NDP majority that was very soon in negative favorability. Oops.