In the issue of the New Yorker dated Nov. 2, Nicholas Lemann raises this question and discusses three possible scenarios; remnant, restoration, and reversal.
Remnant means complete takeover by Trumpists. Typical presidential candidates would be DJT Jr, Mike Pompei, Tucker Carlson, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, and even–for 2044–DJT III.
Restoration means reversion to the party of Reagan. Basically, this has been a bad dream and our real business is business.
Reversal is the most astonishing scenario. It means becoming of the party of the non-college graduate working man. At first it would be the white working man, but as their policies evolved gradually Blacks would be included and Hispanics would be whitewashed like Irish, Italians, and Jews have been before. Meantime, the Democrats would become the party of the college-educated elites. They are already the party of the hi-tech people and, this time around, were also favored by Wall Street.
I really cannot think of a single Republican currently in congress who might be a member of such a party, but what do I know?
I read a follow up interview of Lemann by NPR where he said that he thought that restoration was the likeliest outcome. I believe instead that it will be “remnant.” Those Trump supporters have been brewing and stewing for decades and they’ll be with us for a while, voting for whatever toxic mess is next nominated.
I’d put money on “Remnant.” Some of the more pragmatic Republicans might try to slide over to “Restoration” but I don’t think the crazies will let them. They’ll get primaried in a heartbeat.
Here’s a lady named Molly McCann writing in The Federalist a couple of days ago that the party is now “their’s.” And by “their’s” she means that the old guard Republicans aren’t welcome back, that the party now belongs to the ideals of Trumpism.
That’s pretty scary stuff in that it might be true and that the nation’s second largest political party will be dominated by people like that going forward. OTOH, it might also be a party that has a decreasing chance of obtaining and holding power in the decades to come. If the Dems sweep into power this week, it may want to take on the likes of Tom Cotton and Junior in forthcoming elections.
Thought #1: The rural and small states have their Constitutionally inbuilt advantages in Congress and the EC. Those advantages are free for any party to seize. Provided they can come up with policy(ies) platforms the people in those places will embrace. Those states’ ongoing loss of population towards warmer and more urban states will not dilute their power. Instead it will increasingly over-empower an ever-shrinking number of voters.
Thought #2: The last few years have emplaced a lot of cultural and business Conservatives in the judiciary. Regardless of what happens to the other 2 elected branches, that group will be with us unchanging for a long time, 20-30 years at least. By and large they get the last word. And if they truly get the bit in their teeth, will have an even larger role to play in the future than they have arguably had in the last 50 years.
I haven’t worked out enough to post any conclusions right now. I’ll be back later.
The NY Times Sunday magazine has an article giving a rather convincing argument that the Trumpists now own the party and will for the foreseeable future. That, as claimed above, the traditional Republicans (e.g. like Bush and Romney) are no longer welcome in the party. Also that the only way for a Republican to win the election is go full-on negative. “Biden is a committed socialist who will open the borders to all the foreign criminals and install Sharia law”.
In some ways that gives me hope for the future. Trump was extremely lucky - he stood at the right time and his ‘ideas’ (so to speak) were sufficiently novel, or at least, novelly presented, to appeal to jaded people. I’m not saying there’s no chance for it to happen again, but it would need similar luck to attain.
On the other hand, it could drive moderate voters away from the GOP as time goes by, and it becomes increasingly clear moderate politicians are picked off/driven out.
Neither Trump nor his supporters are going to go anywhere for the next few elections. Hell, I can totally see Trump running in 2024 if he is not in jail. I fully expected Trump’s support to bottom out at the usual 27% of the truly crazy, but it has held steady at around 40% the entire four years. That’s too much to ignore or dismiss, they can’t pretend he doesn’t exist like they did with Bush.
Tl;dr Trump is offsetting some of his losses by capturing a higher share of younger black men and hispanic males of all ages. The total numbers of minority males who have drifted rightward remain small but it is a trend that bears watching nonetheless imho.
In interviews on the subject, several of these men express admiration for Trump’s performance of masculinity — namely his assertiveness, his refusal to be apologetic, his flouting of health and safety protocols amid the coronavirus pandemic, and his association with wealth, which in decades past has made him a pop-culture reference point from hip-hop to Gilmore Girls .
This is something I’ve been pondering a lot for the last four years. I’m interested in getting involved in politics at the local level. On one hand I’m a registered Libertarian but while I’m comfortable voting for the best candidate no matter what there are a lot of straight ticket voters and you probably lose 30% of the electorate no matter what just by not being a D or R. On the other hand I disagree with the majority of the Dems and particularly the vocal left wing of the party that seems to be taking over and it seems like a poor start to my political career to keep telling people in my party how wrong they are, if nothing else it seems like it would make if difficult to get the nomination for county or state house seats. On the third hand I’m disgusted by Trump and just voted for a D president for the first time in my life. I went to my county R website a month ago and it didn’t even talk about the local candidates just Trump not a week ago they just had one blurb about trump at the bottom of a page filled with their candidates and their websites. If they would repudiate Trump and focus on business and government we could find a lot of middle ground but I don’t deal well with the social aspects of the Rs.
In short I still have no idea how I’m going to get involved in politics or if there is even a place for me but a lot of it will depend on if the Rs get their shit together because if they stay crazy I’ll have to be a Dem.
IMO … You want to be in politics at the level that doesn’t have the two big parties. My city and my county elected offices are officially “nonpartisan” which really means “unaffiliated with the state or national Ds & Rs.”
To be sure, some of the candidates make more conservative or liberal sorts of noises about their general policy preferences. But most everybody runs on a platform of “I’ll be effective in this role and responsive to your needs”. They may not be telling the 100% truth there, but it’s a refreshing noise to hear.
The Rs will, in time, need a fresh crop of grassroots NeverTrumpers anti-authoritarians to occupy seats in the statehouses and Congress. But they’re not ready yet. For your own sanity, don’t be the bug on that windshield. Yet.
I think it will be remnant followed by restoration. The Trumpists have too much swap in the GOP right now to give it up but as they lose more elections they’ll lose power.
I sort of think it’ll be a combination of all three, waxing and waning over the next 20-30 years.
Assuming Trump loses on Tuesday, we’ll see a combination of Remnant and Reversal as what rises from the flaming wreckage, with a smaller component of Restoration trying to guide things. Eventually the Remnant will die out as Trump and/or his children are discredited, go to jail, or die, and it’ll probably end up as a competition between the Restorationists and the Reversalists, but I’m not sure which way that’ll go.
I read an article about Liz Cheney, who supposedly could become a Congressional leader. Let’s suppose politicians similar to her (neoconservatives, etc) take over the party. If they can explain why they didn’t stop Trump, they could restore the Bush/McCain/Romney-style Republican Party.
But…
There are a lot of terrible/pro-Trump Republican congresspeople and senators. Nobody has the power to kick those bozos out. If enough of them stick around, then it’s going to be the Party of Trump for some time.
(I’m looking at British politics right now. Johnson kicked all the Remainer MPs out of his party prior to the last election. Labour is currently kicking out Corbynistas who can’t learn lessons. Canadian political leaders have the same power to kick out MPs, equivalent to congresspeople.)
IMHO we talk about the Republican Party as if it is some body of people with some notion of power, outside of Trump. Sure, at the more local and state level, there is a more of a party power organization who can suppress some candidates, and promote others. But, as history has demonstrated, I don’t think that is really the case on the national level. If it were, I believe they (whoever “they” is) would have prevented Trump from moving forward in 2016. Recall that even into the GOP convention there was side chatter about stopping him, but we see what happened there. So, accepting that the Republican Party, at the national level, is the Trump party (for now), I expect that the “remnant” scenario is most likely for the foreseeable future.
The old guard, neo-cons, and Never Trumpers, will squawk and write passionate op-eds in all of the usual organs, but that is all really very inside-baseball stuff that doesn’t really sway the voting populace. The only hope I see for them is if they can somehow hijack FOX News as their mouthpiece - but I don’t see that happening. So, they will (grudgingly) pull the lever for a safe D like Biden, if the Dems come up with more of that, or (grudgingly) pull the lever for the R candidate, if they aren’t TOO toxic (e.g. No to Tom Cotton, Yes to Ted Cruz).
Unfortunately, that’s not how if works here. the Ds and the Rs each get to nominate someone for the ballet who automatically get on. The minor parties have to get 750 signatures to get their candidate on the ballet which is doable but more work and typically only the Ls even get another name on the ballet. So you do have to be in good with the local level political org to have a shot. At least here there are very much partisan to the extent that most of them either go on to serve in the State house or just came from the state house or senate.
I agree with this which is why I want to start at the county level both to see if it is something I really want to do once I’m involved in the process and to give more time for the craziness to blow over but if it doesn’t and the Rs go down the Remnant path I’d like to start at the local level as a D rather then trying to jump parties once it clear the crazy isn’t going away.
Remnant, especially as long as Trump lives and remains at large. His teeming minions will be a voting block that anyone running as a Republican will have to cater too. In 8-12 years, with Trump presumably dead, then there will be reversal, as they try to claw back moderates using issues that are important to the middle - control of the deficit and (especially after Trump) smaller, less intrusive government.
Personally, I’d love to see smaller government and some fiscal conservatism, but sadly, I’m not willing to trust any Republican reversal that includes the current generation of Rs. They already proved completely willing to sell out any policy for naked power.
There’s some severe whackadoodle in that “article”:
The extreme left wing of the Democratic Party is hurtling toward socialism and the destruction not only of statues but of American values and the fundamental principles of this country. Indeed, the escalating rhetoric currently employed by the left historically does not just silence dissent, it eventually seeks to eliminate the dissenters. America is in a struggle not only for its identity, but for its life.
We’ve been eliminating dissenters?? Why am I the last to know about this? Somebody’s been snagging stuff out of my In Box, probably for rolling papers…