Believe it or not, there is a faction of the Republican Party that does not believe in MAGA, believe the Constitution should run the country and not The Bible™, that newcomers are human beings, &c. But many are afraid to speak out because they get cancelled by the loonies.
At some point (hopefully) the Republican Party as a whole will come to its senses and say, “WTF were we thinking?!” Yes there will be wackos, there always are on both sides but we can already see an exodus of (relatively) rational Republicans leaving the House because they are too old for this shit. Liz Cheney (not a moderate) was forced out because how dare she think an insurrectionist be impeached but Lisa Murkowski is still relatively safe. Phil Scott, governor of Vermont, does not seem to come under attack for being moderate and opposed to many Trumpisms.
So the question on the floor is: when should the moderate Republicans start coming out of the woodwork, demand their party return to normalcy, and start setting themselves as the “right” choice (Get it? Right choice. Ha Ha Ha) for the next election whenever that is?
No time machines needed. If, after nearly a half a century, the Republican Party as a whole has not come to its senses and said, “WTF were we thinking?!” what gives you any hope that this time will be different?
They should start right now. They won’t win “the next election” if Trump blows this one, because despite the best efforts of these purported “normal” Republicans, the party as a whole will not renounce Trump so easily. They will blame the loss on not being sufficiently Trumpy, and double down on candidates even worse than we see now.
At some point, this downward spiral of Lose > Double Down > Lose Again will finally break the spirit of the deplorables, or they’ll just die off, and then maybe the “normal, moderate” Republicans who have hung in there long enough can begin to reform the party, but even then, they’re looking at at least a couple of elections worth of proving they’re Not Trump Anymore.
With 4 year Presidential election cycles, I put it at no less than 16 years before they’re even remotely viable, and probably longer. 4 years of Biden’s next term, minimum of 8 years of Trumpism-dominated losses to whoever succeeds Biden, and at least another 4 years after than for the “reformed” GOP (RGOP) to try to get its new message out. Its gets longer if the Trumpists hang in there an extra election or two, and if the RGOP has trouble convincing people they’ve changed.
If this wasn’t the US with its well-entrenched two party system, I’d say the moderate Republicans would be better served just starting a whole new party, but that’s unlikely to work.
I don’t think they will. Consider what happened after the George W. Bush administration. The economy was terrible, and the war in Iraq had been a massive clusterfuck. I think, deep down, most Republicans realized that he’d been a failure. They never talk about W. anymore, but neither do they stand up and say “we were wrong”. I don’t think they can even really admit it to themselves, so they cast their minds to look for any reason they can cling to for why the whole debacle wasn’t their fault.
I think the same thing will happen after Trump. The party will never explicitly repudiate Trump, and the voters won’t go for anyone who speaks ill of him, but they’ll line up behind some charismatic politician who gets them outraged over something trivial and tells them they were right all along.
But those were also the Obama years, which was the beginning of the steep part of their descent. They wouldn’t have disowned W because they were just really getting going on the crazy that led us to Trump. This roller coaster didn’t start in 2016.
The GOP only has one leader right now. All other elected Republicans are ruled by the base that follows that one leader. A very few fortunate Republican leaders come from places (like Alaska, Maine, or Vermont) where there is a culture of individualism that lets them short circuit that cultish loyalty as long as they don’t stick their necks out too far. Before other Republicans can exercise actual leadership, Trump will either be dead or otherwise silenced.
And also, if the GOP is ever to be a viable party again, they’ll need to recapture a lot of voters that they’ve lost to the Democrats. Everyone who is reluctantly voting Biden this year is a potential gain, if they can ever get their heads out of their asses.