I’ve predicted that virtually every Republican elected to a Federal office will swallow whatever needs swallowing in order to endorse Trump.
I’ve predicted that Hilary and the Democratic Party will sweep the presidency and both the Senate and House.
And now I predict that the loss will be so huge that the Republican Party will not long survive it. There will be so many recriminations and so much backbiting that the party will split into at least two, and I think three, different parties. There’ll be some kind of pragmatist party, willing to move somewhat to the left in order to attract more minority voters. There’ll be the remains of the conservative/corporatist party, more like the Republicans of say 15 years ago. And then they’ll be the whackadoodle overtly racist fundamentalist anti-everything fringe.
What I can’t predict is who will retain ownership of the brand name “Republican”. They will fight over it, and the winner will, uh, lose. Because the smart ones won’t want that label anymore.
The Republicans won’t be able to field a respectable presidential candidate for 2020. No big surprise, because they couldn’t manage it this time either.
“You heard it here first!” I I feel like the crazy guy in to movie 2012 with the radio straped to his back who turned out to be right about everything.
Mods, I put this in the Elections forum, but if someone feels the need to move it into GD, have at it.
I think it’s less likely than not, but not impossible. I would add another prediction to this one. If the Republican Party does break up, the Democratic Party won’t be too far behind. Without a monolithic opposition, the Democrats would likely split into the Obama/Clinton wing and a Sanders wing. The Obama/Clinton wing would be the older Democrats and minorities. The Sanders wing would be younger white progressives. I don’t see how both groups would stay in the same tent if the Republicans completely fall apart. I do think such a split would be more amicable for the Democrats than for the Republicans.
I think the pragmatists will move to the Clinton/Obama party.
Clinton/Obama centrist party = 40% of electorate
Sanders left/youth party = 20%
Ryan/Establishment Republican party =15%
Whackadoodle Trump racist party = 20%
I don’t care Party = 5%
Those four groupings probably wouldn’t even need new names. The first would still be Democrats, the second Greens, the third Libertarians, the fourth Republicans. At least that’s how I would name them if the parties broke along those lines.
I think the Democratic Party will end up splitting too, but maybe not until the after the next mid-terms.
We’ll end up with the rump of a Republican party (social conservatives, fundamentalists, and racists), getting 20-30% of the electorate. The Democratic party (social liberals, corporatists, and pragmatists from the left and right) getting 50-60%. And the Progressive Party (economic progressives and leftists) getting 15-25%.
Usually, when there’s a party shift, the two smaller groups would band together under the name of one of the two big parties to form an opposition against the newly dominant party. But that’s not going to happen this time, I think, unless social conservatives (who are breaking up with corporatists) and economic progressives (who are breaking up with social liberals) can work together.
Our elections system doesn’t handle three parties well. What we’ll see in the short term is two-party regionalization, where any single part of the country will have two parties, but which parties will vary by region. So the West Coast and Northeast will have Democrats and Progressives, while the South will have Democrats and Republicans. The Midwest might go any combo.
Edit: that’s what I get for typing and then walking away before posting. I see others are thinking along the same lines.
If he tells you that you don’t know how to properly and carefully word your prayer, you prayer will have been answered. He will be speaking the truth. God is kind of a dink.
If the Republican Party splits into various factions, who keeps the name? The stationary, the offices, trusts and monies dedicated to the Republican Party. Behold, with wonder, as lawyers gather to feast!
Well, dunno. Every registered Republican has the same boney fidos as any other. There might need be some sort of election. Referendum. Or, if the Goddess is kind and whimsical, a convention! (Cortana, investment portfolio reminder: buy popcorn futures!)
But in theory the ordinary Republican has the same status as the Koch Bros., at least in terms of documentation. Of course, the Koch Bros. have a lot of *other *documents that attest to their civic virtue and wisdom.
I think Trump sees this as a leveraged takeover; Spend 28 million to get your hands on several hundred million in assets.
Yes, I know this is stupid and unworkable, and there are rules that prevent Trump from getting his hands on the money personally, but when did a stupid and unworkable plan stop Trump in the past?
If Trump crashes and burns, there’s no one left standing with the credibility and influence to lead and organize a new faction. Even with a sizable voting bloc looking to jump ship, that is an enormous undertaking. Who would take that on? One of the driving principles of American conservatism today is that government is ineffective and de facto corrupt. The whole impulse behind the GOP is not governing. There’s no one on that side of the fence who even knows how to make a functioning political party.
There’ll be the usual reckoning, in which the elite powers-that-be blame everything but the real problem (i.e., a self-defeating, near-nihilist philosophy that forces them to pander to their drooling base with promises that are impossible to fulfill). What they will do is put some new safeguards into the primary process to keep the next whackadoodle from taking the nomination with a slender plurality of the votes.
What I see as more likely is that there will be a platform and demographic shift like we saw in the 1960’s. The Republican party, once the pro-civil-rights party of Lincoln finished a 100-year shift into the anti-civil-rights party of disaffected Dixiecrats. White southerners who had supported Democratic economic policy chose to support Republican social policy.
I hesitate to make any predictions about whether/how this will happen or on what issue, but it is perhaps notable that Trump and Sanders basically agree with each other by fighting free trade agreements… and yet the establishment in both parties basically supports free trade. If the right things fell into place, that might create a new coalition centered on a nationalist/protectionist platform.
The time is ripe for a Centrist Party made up of fiscal conservatives and social progressives. That could be the Libertarians but they need to do a serious rebranding and cut out parts of their platform like abolition of the income tax, their laissez-faire policy on regulations that protect consumers and their isolationism foreign policy.
If I were Nick Sarwark I would start over from scratch with few basic premises.
A sustainable tax/spending system that shift the burden from personal income tax to businesses.
An immigration policy that makes sense. Consider amending the 14th amendment to remove anchor babies, define NBC, etc. but also put in a system that supports foreign nationals to emigrate here to be productive members of society.
A reminder that the Constitution governs the US, not the Bible.
Then quietly talk with select Representatives and Senators about jumping to the Libertarian Party after the election and work to break the hedgmony of the two-party system.
I think a three party system might suit us for a while.
Democrats: Left of where they are today
Republicans: Moderates, Corporatists.
Tea Party: America, Guns, God, fuck everything else, including the public good
The Tea Party would be regionally strong and I don’t think that’s all in the South, but also chunks of the West and Midwest. They would present a viable alternative to the Republicans in solid red areas. They would represent the Know Nothing - Do Nothings in congress, doing their best to cut the government, invade every non-White Christian nation on Earth, and promote both Christianity and Cognitive Dissonance.
The Republicans moving to the center would be more competitive with the Democrats in solid blue states. They’d also be a lot less likely to stop up the business of Government because the President is black (and a bunch of words that make no sense in combination).
The two party system isn’t a coincidence. It’s because of a combination of one past the post, geographical legislative districts, and lack of provision for coalition government. Other countries with few parties have some of these, but we have all.
Sure, they are ways the keep the two party system and realign. There could be a Christian Democrat party vs. a liberatarian/secularist/corporatist party. The pro-lifers would go with the first, the gun enthusiasts with the second. But I don’t see any enthusiam for that. Instead, people on the internet seem to want more parties so there would be one closer to their personal preferences. That just isn’t consistent with the US system of government.
Buckminster Fuller used to do a rope trick on the lecture circuit: He would have a length of cotton cord, one of hemp, one of silk, all spliced together to make one rope. Tie a loose half-knot at the silk end, slide it down to the cotton end – is it still the same knot?
Now compare Lincoln’s GOP with today’s.
The Democrats and the Republicans can do that, they can completely change their politics and constituencies gradually over time and still plausibly keep the same party names.
But the Libertarians can’t do that. They’re stuck with a party name that actually has definite ideological content.
Yep. I’m starting to think it’s the American consumerist mentality taken to its logical extreme: I can buy exactly the kind of the kind of smartphone I want, so why can’t I get exactly the kind of candidate I want?