Mondale didn’t have nearly the control over the Democrats that Trump has over the Republicans. Mondale was just a generic, easily replaceable Democratic politician. If Gary Hart had won the nomination instead, the campaign wouldn’t have fundamentally changed. He was not leading a cult of personality and there was no political style that could be described as Mondaleism.
This is plausible (and terrifying), but the counterpoint is that (for whatever reason) people have seemed to see through the bullshit of other Trump-like politicians more readily.
I also think it’s going to be more difficult for someone who has the skills of a career fraudster to seek high office without getting indicted along the way.
For better or for worse, most human institutions are better-insulated against threats they’ve already encountered. The next threat to the Republic will look different in a way that doesn’t twig people’s acquired aversion to Trump.
I think there’s too much value in the branding of the Republican party for it to just go away. There’s a significant fraction of the electorate that chooses whoever has an R next to their name. The Republican party will still exist in some form to capture those votes.
It’s a party that lacks diversity, and in nature, lacking diversity is what leads to extinction. I think the analogy applies to politics as well. I don’t necessarily mean that Republicans or any political party can’t be majority white, but it can’t be as white as it is now in a pluralistic society like ours and expect to survive in the marketplace of ideas. That’s exactly why it has become so authoritarian - it stopped competing in that marketplace of ideas and instead opted to compete for raw power.
I believe that even if we go past a tipping point and experiment with something less than democracy, it won’t be long before people - including those who now support republicans - will realize their mistake and reject their worldview, because it’s a view that is based on hierarchy and social Darwinism.
If you mean that the current political goals and coalition that comprise the Republican party will go away, I agree with you.
But you’re saying that the actual party will dissolve, the way the Whigs did.
I think that’s wrong. There will still be a party called “Republican” in 100 years. It will probably be as different from the Republican party of today as the one from today is from the one 100 years ago, but the value of the name is likely too high to jettison entirely.
Agreed. Unless:
If the R brand name becomes like AK in Turkey today or (more extremely) like the NSDAP in 1950s Germany, the next incarnation of a party with conservative or “rightward” leanings will need a different name to succeed.
How many of Donald’s 60+ million voters are the “Trump!Trump!Trump!he should be king, not president!” kind and how many are holding their noses? If the answer is 40 million or more of the former, then I suggest that it’s the GOP which is in some serious trouble for a while.
Lots of vestigial supporters means that Trump will be at minimum an agitator for four more years and possibly even run in '24. Or one of the kids will. They won’t be able to win the general but they could earn the nomination.
In addition, this will put tremendous stress on Republican Senate candidates in both '22 and '24. Running away from Trump gets them primaried. Running as a Trump toady in a competitive state means a loss in the general.
Lindsey Graham may have been right that Donald Trump may end up killing the Republican Party.
You really think he can live that long?
Well, that’s sort of unknowable. But maybe Trump has been sent by God to punish us for our collective sins and he will outlive all of us, still sending hate filled tweets long after he needs assistance to get to the toilet.
As an aside: Now watch both Trump AND Biden live to 110, just as the universe’s way of spiting every internet commenter.
I have personally witnessed otherwise good, conservative, Republicans-of-Olde go completely batshit crazy in the past five years. Completely. And not in the “well, they disagree with me” way so many people use the you’re crazy phrase to mean, today… I mean frothing at the mouth, making excuses for bad behavior, etcetera.
It tells me that those people really weren’t good people, to begin with. Now that it’s okay for them to be openly racist, sexist, or what-have-you, they simply appear batshit crazy to the normal, normalized world. We’re just witnessing the unravelling.
In other words, I agree that any self-respecting conservative of sound mind would be quick to distance themselves from the Republican moniker.
According a link in the Senate races thread, Republican candidates are starting to edge away from him now. His coattails have already shrunk to the size of postage stamps. Yeah, he’ll tweet (hopefully from a jail cell) but he’ll be yesterday’s news faster than W. was on January 21, 2009. And good riddance.
If he is defeated decisively, then I really think they have no choice but to move a little more towards the center and away from the most extreme elements of their party. I think they need to find a person who is respected for having some character because their current standard bearer has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has none.
That’s why I prefaced my remarks that it is important to know how big the Trump absolutist base is, at least as a proportion of the conservative electorate. I think we’re about to find out that it’s not big enough for him to win re-election but is it big enough to control primaries? I don’t know the answer to that second part but if it remains substantial, it really puts GOP candidates in tough situations in competitive states in '22 and '24.
Like who?
- List of former Trump administration officials who endorsed Joe Biden
- List of Republicans who opposed the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign
- List of Republicans who oppose the 2020 Donald Trump presidential campaign
- List of Trump administration appointees who endorsed Joe Biden
Gotta be someone in there.
The question concerned WHAT they might do, not HOW they might accomplish it. LOL
Trump’s early primary victories in 2016 were in the realm of 25-33% of the vote. That worked upwards as candidates dropped IIRC he had between 41 and 42 percent of total votes at the point where Kasich and Cruz dropped out. Call it up to a third of GOP primary voters being true Trump believers. Add in those that favored Trump over most Republicans without quite being absolutists and we get closer to 2/5 of the party.
That is absolutely brutal for a primary challenge.
If he’s still alive in 2024 and (I was going to say compos mentis until I caught myself) let’s say much the same mentally as he is now, do you think he would allow one of his kids to run instead of him? Frankly, I don’t see it
The Trump campaign did demonstrate a skill they definitely do have, which is spotting something of which to take advantage. The GOP primaries were designed to create a prohibitive frontrunner fast, fast, FAST! by relying on giving winner-take-all delegate counts to the early plurality holder.
The GOP establishment wanted to avoid the 2012 frontrunner-of-the-week clown car situation (that TBH was mostly pre-primary anyway) or the risk of getting to the convention with a close runner-up harrumphing in the background (which BTW did not hurt the Dems in 2008 at all; but they still apparently carry the Ford/Reagan wounds); and to save on hitting the donors for funds until the general race. So the idea was to cull the candidate pool very quickly once real primaries began. And to paraphrase a wag’s saying, they got what they asked for… good and hard.
I don’t know what to expect from the party itself. Does it listen to the Lincoln people? Break up into Trump-kid factions?
I do know that if Trump is alive, receives a federal pardon, 50 state pardons, and loses… no one is going to care about him six months after January. Except for the red hat true believers, everyone is exhausted by him. The next step up on the ladder from the red hatters, Fox News, is bored by him. Rush isn’t going to give him 2 full hours to rant in March. The victim-Trump is compelling when it’s a narrative of him fighting for the “right” people. When he’s just a washed up old man with a bad rug? It’s whining and boring. When he doesn’t have power, who is going to give him access to a camera when they have to suck up to Cruz or Rubio or Haley? It won’t be just that he’s toxic and radioactive, but he’s BORING.