The Republican Civil War

The BBQ Pit
1

Yesterday I posted this article in the “Shadenfreude” thread and made a quip about a Repub “Uncivil War”:

It really is a battle for “the heart and soul of the Republican party” as cliched and corny as the phrase may be.

The Republican party has for awhile now, since well before trump, been struggling for dominance in a changing American culture in which the party’s traditional base, affluent white people, is steadily shrinking in number. They’ve managed to hold onto power in various degrees through increasingly desperate tactics such as crazily gerrymandered districts, voter suppression tactics, and convincing less affluent Americans that things such as inexpensive, widely available health care are “Socialism”.

Then trump comes along and fires up a certain core base of non-typically Repub voters: mostly white, but not usually affluent, with messages that resonate with them, though many of those messages have little or nothing to do with traditional Repub values. While still actually going along with things that typical upper class Repubs like, such as installing the right kinds of Federal judges and supporting legislation that makes rich people richer.

But the trump admin descends into insanity to the point that trump acolytes fight a free and fair election process they lost, testing the very fabric of Democracy to the point of fomenting an attempted coup.

Most Repub politicians realize that trumpism is nuts, at least in private. Some even publicly denounced the riot, and by extension trump and trumpism, soon afterward.

But there’s a problem: trump’s minority but still sizable, and very motivated, loyal base believe the big lie. Only a certain number of Repubs have the will to stand their ground and continue to denounce trump. The Lindsay Grahams, et al, take back their denunciations and crawl back to trumpism because they’re afraid to alienate the loyal trump base. If all Repubs put up a united front they might be able to excise the cancer of trumpism, but there are too many who are either true believers or naked opportunists willing to embrace trumpism with open arms-- the Gaetzes, Hawleys, Taylor-Greenes, Boeberts, etc. etc.

So it comes to this-- 100ish Repubs threatening to leave the party and possibly start a third party. But, to paraphrase Lincoln, a party divided against itself cannot win. So what do you think will happen?

  • A permanent third party forms that has “traditional” Repub values and claims to have more integrity than the Repub party which becomes fully the party of trumpism. This causes both parties to be marginalized and results in Democratic party dominance for the foreseeable future.
  • The Repub party does not split, but trumpism dies down and the pendulum swings back toward more “traditional” Repub values. Biz as usual pre-trump, in other words, more or less.
  • The Repub party does not split, but fully becomes the party of trumpism.
  • Something else?
2

The war is over, decisively so.

3

Well, it is my hope of hopes that Trump does not run again, but I think someone like Trump, albeit more palatable will. Like DeSantis.

I don’t think these splinter never Trumper groups will amount to a hill of beans in the long run to be honest.

4

If you want it.

5

I’m probably a cockeyed optimist but here’s my guess.

The letter from the 100 mostly former GOP members comes and goes and is forgotten about by July. The Republican party divides into a minority who actively promote Trumpism and conspiracy thinking (Gaetz, Green, Boebert etc.), and a majority who simply condone it (I would put Graham in this group). Over time as more alligations against Trump and his administration come out, his supporters get more marginalized as mainstream America and particularly corporate America starts shunning the whackadoodlism. Individual Trump supporters engage in violent attempts are insurrection which further separates Trumpism from the main stream, and causes Republicans and right wing media tone down their rhetoric of calls for revolution.

Over the next decade or so Republicans wring all they can out of voter suppression an gerrymandering and still start coming up short. Whacakdoodles get voted out in the general. Attempts to straight out over turn elections continue to get slammed down by judges. The Republican party denies that more than a handful of their members ever considered supporting Trump.

Shortly after his death he gets a rebranding as not being actually so bad, particularly in comparison to the theocratic Dominionist candidate that is the current the GOP front runner.

6

This has already happened to some degree, yet trumpism stubbornly refuses to go away so far.

Hey, I thought you were being an optimist! I’m hoping after his death there’s a de-trumpification process, similar to the de-Stalinization reforms after Stalin’s death. Also similar to the de-trumpification of his formerly branded properties going on now.

7

As a nitpick, it’s the proportion that’s shrinking rather than the absolute number.
My current favourite bon mot regarding the US body politic is that the GOP has beaten the DEM for the “white” vote in every presidential election since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

8

Those 100 Republicans seem to be either A) old Republicans who were in office years or decades ago and are no longer in a position of power, and B) Never Trumpers and others who have already split with the Republicsn party (ie Bill Weld).

I predict this will have about as much impact as the letter from 124 ex-generals calling out Biden administration policies and questioning the election. i.e. pretty much nothing.

9

I would be careful about gloating. We’re heading for extreme times.

10

I think the world is a complex place (and has always been so), and that a large percentage of Trump’s supporters are utterly invested in finding someone who will tell them that no, it isn’t: we’re great, we’ve always been great, and if you let me do what I want, we will always be great.

All those things that make you doubt yourself or your past, or make you feel bad, or less special, they are all wrong . Don’t listen to them, they’re fake. You only need to listen to me, because I love you. Don’t worry about what you hear, it’s all fake, I’m in charge, and I always will be and we will win together.

It’s very seductive. This is not a political movement, it has much more in common with a religious one. It’s about faith and belief, not knowledge or reason. And it’s explicitly so for many evangelical Christians. So this movement, for lack of a better word, is probably here to stay for at least a generation. The ‘traditional’ Republicans are currently wringing hands, but they’ll go along with it rather than lose any bit of power they have - always claiming that it’s to “provide the voice of reason”. And in 5-10 years, it’ll be nothing but true believers and cynical opportunists at the top, with a legion of zealots doing whatever they’re told.

11

I think this is really spot-on, and it does explain why evangelicals were so much in his camp despite all of his many, many moral failings. A large part of the appeal of trumpism is in telling a certain demographic exactly what they want to hear. Soothing fictions like “Make America Great Again”- they’ll ‘restore’ the country to a nostalgic vision that never really existed in the first place.

I heard or read somewhere that, in preparation for trump’s campaign, his handlers listened to a lot of AM radio talk shows to find out what the grievances of the callers were, and built his campaign around exploiting their fears and frustrations.

12

(emphasis mine)

I think this is the answer. Republicans might be able to rig the electoral system to retain power for a while, but corporations wield a lot of power in this country and their “voters” (i.e., customers) won’t be silenced. When they see their bottom lines threatened by supporting the GOP, they’ll stop.

(I suspect the GOP knows this, too. That’s why they have such hatred for Bezos and Gates, and why they’re stoking the “cancel culture” narrative.)

13

What I wonder is, Why doesn’t this approach work on the rest of us? All of the trumpist (and similar) soothing fictions don’t seem to make me feel so good! Don’t we all want the world to be a nice simple place? What’s wrong with us all? What are we missing?? /s

14

The serious answer is, empathy. Repubs don’t have it. It’s that simple.

Liberals can put themselves in the place of someone else - “what would I think if my voting rightds were removed?” And we can answer it. Repubs can’t. They’re all “those people shouldn’t vote.” It is impossible for them to think someone else might consider repubs as “those people”.

15

Seconded. I remember how on the eve of the 2016 election, the Republican Party was supposed to be in its death throws. Because, you know, there is no way a man like Trump could become President.

16

When I look at right wing extremism right now, it seems like it’s flailing and disorganized - and it is. It’s looking for a brand and identity. It found that under Trump. Now that he’s been vanquished, there’s optimism that the worst is behind us, but I see the storm clouds of human ecology and scarcity building in the distance.

Trump supporters are not necessarily the working poor, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t feel threatened or deprived. The fear of losing power can be just as real as the fear of losing status on the lower echelons of society. Humans are essentially social, and thus, to some degree, hierarchical creatures. Fear of losing status, or a desire to have status that you feel you’re entitled to, can inspire extremist behavior.

17

I think this is the biggest factor in why this effort will most likely fail. Unless a significant number of sitting members of Congress repudiate the party, and sit as independents, and actually vote against at least the worst parts of the Trumpist agenda, this “split” actually costs the GOP voters nothing. Why bother re-thinking your support of Trump if the Republicans in Congress all go along with his nonsense anyways?

What the US really needs is for some significant proportion of those sitting members to care more about the country than their agenda. Alas, they’ve spent the last 12+ years showing that they don’t care more about the country than their agenda, so this is at best a faint hope.

18

I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Do you think most liberals really understand what it’s like to be a coal miner in West Virginia, or a farmer in Kansas, or spend much time trying to?

I don’t think the farmer or the miner spend any time trying to understand what it’s like to be a college student in New York, either. Everybody has struggles, and both sides could do a better job of listening to each other.

19

I don’t know what it’s like to be a coal miner in WV. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Black man in Detroit. But as well as a straight White male, I intellectually understand their struggles even though I’ve never experienced them. I do know what it’s like to struggle financially. The difference is that when that happens, I look within. Conservatives, as a group, blame other people for their problems. So I can empathise with people who are struggling, and wish to help them. Conservatives, as a group, cannot empathise with those outside of their tribe. ‘Screw Those People! I have my own problems! Their problems are their own fault. My problems are because of Them!’

Of course that breaks down the closer you get; but on a macro level that seems to be the trend.

20

I’ve actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about those guys, yes. I once even visited a coal mining museum that actually has a mine they built for the museum, so you can get some sense of what it was like. Even as a tourist just walking through this small mine you get exhausted. I came away even more convinced these guys were completely screwed by just about everybody.

Besides, how many movies, TV shows, and books are there about farmers, coal miners and the like? Quite a few. Who do you thinks watches and reads those?