DeSantis is even more of a racist than trump.
I do not think he will be able to.
I imagine, that should Harris win by enough of a margin that it’s confirmed within a normal amount of time and the stupidest lawsuits are brushed aside, it’ll be less than 24 hours before TFG declares his next candidacy, and says that he can’t possibly be forced to go through any of his delayed trials or sentencing because that’s election (2028) interference. MAGA nation and several members of SCOTUS will concur.
If we’re lucky, they’ll have to sleep in the mess they’ve made and be a minority party on the federal level for a generation. But we have to be lucky every election, and they only have to be lucky once. Next time they claim the White House, Senate and House it’s all over.
Long term – and I mean after a lot of us are dead – some sane version of the GOP resembling the Reagan-Bush years may emerge from the MAGA ashes. But as I said upthread, they’re more likely to start a civil war than go down gracefully.
With election losses at the national level continuing (as assumed by the OP), the GOP may retrench locally and become stronger at that level, further fracturing the country more on a geographical level than political.
If the GOP gets tired, eventually, of losing the big one, bigly, their leaders may grow a pair and push the party leftward back toward the middle and away from the precipice. They’d have to smack down the Boeberts and MTGs and put the evangelicals in their place, maybe gently, maybe not. The MAGA’s should be marginalized - if they don’t like what the core GOP is doing, they can f!ck off - who else are they gonna vote for?
Moderates coming into the tent will eventually and easily replace the MAGA wing’s votes (even if the MAGAs stay home) and may pull a little at the Dems, and power can swing back toward sane conservative policy and normal compromising in governing. It’s going to take grass roots, strong party leadership and demand from top donors to make the change - right now they are all in a trance - a nice run of Presidential election losses may finally pop that bubble.
The basic problem with that is that it’ll drive away their base, who want a leader like Trump. That’s how he got into power in the first place. And more likely than not instead vote for whatever candidate offers them the most poison - which is how Trump got the nomination back in 2016, very much against the will of the supposed party elite.
It’s the same problem they are having all over the nation in lower level elections; the Trumpists keep forcing out the more moderate Republicans in the primaries.
Shit twice as much and tell their supporters that the stench is the fault of the Democrats.
Yeah. So far they’ve had a consistent response to failure: double down, and blame the Democrats. I think it’ll take something pretty drastic - like an extended period of time out of power - to shock them out of that.
I kind of feel like without Trump as the charismatic cult-of-personality leader, MAGA will sort of writhe and squirm while various other politicians try and assume his mantle without success, because they’re not him.
Eventually, MAGA will fade into background noise, and I suspect we’ll end up with more conventional Republicans, but I also think that even if the party itself wants to shift more centrist, the people who make up the Republican voter rank and file have a taste for fascism and hate now, and that’s a genie that we can’t put back in the bottle anytime soon, if ever.
Batshit crazy Republicans win lots of general elections at the local and state level. Some of them have been elected to Congress multiple times. I suspect there are plenty of ready-made Trump wannabes who win the GOP primaries for POTUS with a different style from Trump but just as much effectiveness. It might get messy, but the MAGAts would settle on a new cult hero soon enough.
And we know there are millions of people who may not be deplorables but will automatically vote for the GOP candidate. Whether it’s Trump, Vance, DeSantis or some other whackjob in 2028, they’ll be guaranteed ~45% of the vote and ~200 electoral votes.
And all they have to do is get lucky one time.
I agree with this up to the ‘shock’ part. I think they’ll gradually bleed out supporters over many years. Some will be MAGAs who just get tired of losing, and withdraw from politics. Others will be giving up on the loser party, and decide to try to move the Democratic party into a position they prefer.
Eventually, the GOP would be small enough that some group decides they can hijack the whole party apparatus and use it for their own purposes.
I’m more convinced that MAGA is a more diffuse, inchoate sort of feeling/attitude without the sort of catalyst/lens/conduit to get it to be more than that. And Trump’s that catalyst, largely due to force of personality and pre-existing fame.
While there are MAGA down-ballot candidates, they’re not Trump, and that’s what I think will make all the difference.
The sane republicans had a chance after Jan 6 to cut him loose. They decided to keep him in the party. They are stuck with him.
They might have lost a cycle or two, but by now they could have strengthened the party and sidelined the maga party lead by trump.
Now the sane republicans have to vote for democrats.
Yeah, we said that about the Tea Party too. How’d that work out?
“MAGA” is just the latest version of the same reactionary, bigoted political faction that has existed in the US since it was founded. They were the slavers then and they are MAGA now, and they’ll be called something else in the future but they won’t go away.
The Fascist party will continue in strength as long as people want it to. And a lot of people want it to. It really isn’t about the leadership.
The only thing I can think of that will weaken fascism in this or any other country is the reversal of the policies which consistently disempower and impoverish the middle and working classes. When people have strong community ties, meaningful sustaining work, affordable housing, and feel they are respected participants in a democracy which works for them, fascism is not going to take hold. Racism and anti-immigrationism are safe outlets for rage and frustration, and if that rage was assuaged, those would be muted.
It would take an enormous sea change to make the above happen. It took the genius and desperation of FDR, WW2, and the subsequent flood of wealth that nearly everyone got a piece of, to damp down the inherent bigotries of Americans.
Will anything comparable happen again? Very doubtful to me. Which means that Fascism will be the m.o. of the GOP for the foreseeable future.
Very insightful post overall.
The sick irony of the above statement is that roughly half of the middle and working classes vote for the party actively working to disempower and impoverish them.
(The Dems haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory in this department over the last 50 years, but at least they’re trying.)
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” - Lyndon B. Johnson
It’s a political tactic with a long history of success.
I’ve been thinking for a long time that the demographics of decreasing white voters and slowly increasing voters of color has been what’s driving their desperate racist tactics. It’s a race between their electing a fascist President or our electing a non-fascist President until they no longer have enough votes to elect another fascist again. As has been noted, they need only win once to upset the balance–with Trump in power, they may be able to hold power indefinitely, but if he can be held off for four more years, MAGA may not have the numbers ever again.
The “demographics are destiny” argument has been tried for 50 years. Somehow people keep raising new jerks and racists and whatnot.
There are many non-whites who are trumpers. Non-whites come in an entire pecking order of ethnicities, and there’s not a lot of agreement between them about what exactly that order is. But for darn sure, at least some members of any given flavor of brown people are sure they’re better than Those Other Brown people.
There are also many established immigrants who are trumpers. The common explanation is they see themselves as better than newer arrivals. All the more so if the influx from their home country has subsided and the current influx is from That Other Country. Even if they all speak dialects of the same language back home.
It’s far from a 100% Democratic/liberal/progressive/commie united vote, true. But the more POC, recent immigrants, queer folks, non-Christians and atheists/agnostics, etc. you get, the more the pro-fascist vote gets eroded, generally.