In 2008-2016, Obama was the leader of the Republican party: Whatever he said, they were the opposite, even when he said the same things they had said previously.
So there’s a possibility that the new leader of the Republican party will be Biden, in the same way. Though I suspect that in practice, the person that the Republicans end up opposing in all ways will actually be Harris, not Biden, for chromosome and melanin-related reasons.
Heck, finding a Trumpist who can even spell “chromosome” or “melanin” will be nigh impossible. But that won’t stop the hatin’; nothing will stop the hatin’.
Trump will be diminished though still quite powerful. There will be anger at how he cost the Republicans the Senate with his post-election shenanigans. His likely legal problems will distract and weaken him. Without the Presidential platform, he simply won’t command that much attention. And given his age and health, it’s not clear how much of an appetite he still has for politics. However no one will take his place until and unless they win the nomination in 2024.
John_DiFool
Trump will somehow avoid any real legal consequences as he has his entire life.
Oh, he’ll get sued, he’ll settle and get some other suckers to pay it off … <
But what when he runs out of cash? If I misunderstand correctly, his debts vastly exceed his assets, and his creditworthiness is … well, a byword by now.
Nobody.
King Mob has no Master.
That would save them in the sense that it would restore some sanity to the party. IMHO, however, it would be a losing proposition electorally. The sR (sane Republican) party got extremely lucky in 2000 and 2004. Had the sR party nominated someone like Jeb Bush or Kasich in 2016, they would have likely lost. They would have probably lost 2020 as well. I think the only chance the Rs have to win the presidency short of moving the party platform to the left is to nominate a cR (crazy Republican).
This leads me to predict that Trump will likely remain the leader of the party.
Exactly. The only reason he hasn’t been banned from Twitter a long time ago is that Twitter has a special carve-out policy for world leaders, allowing said leaders to make posts that are against Twitter’s terms of service, and would otherwise lead to a banning.
Given the various flags that Twitter has placed on Trump’s tweets (about disputed information) in the past weeks, and the suspension he got yesterday, it’s clear that Twitter is sick of his shit, and it seems incredibly likely that he’ll get hit by the banhammer shortly after he leaves office.
Twitter was among the many, many targets of his unhinged rant stirring up the mob prior to yesterday’s storming of the Bastille. A rant in which he also blamed every Republican who hasn’t fully supported him (the Supreme Court, etc., who were “afraid of how liberals in the swamp might criticize them”), which means that he’ll be going it with an ever more limited group of elected supporters going forward – some of whom wish to depose and replace him.
The train wreck to watch over the next four years is the knife fight for those 74 million voters.
Your problem lies in the question, who is the GOP. The asshats in Congress are not the GOP. They have no real power without the support of their constituents and even if their callow self-interest motivates them to disavow Trump, their voters will not listen and will not care. They will turn on them.
The GOP, those 75 million fascists and traitors who still chose to support Trump after 4 years of this, are not appalled by what happened today. They have no sympathy for the congress critters who had their house messed up and the night’s sleep spoiled. This will be the party of Trump until he’s dead or in prison, and even then it may not fade.
Who are a mix of neo-fascists and White Power crazies and others who believe using those people to get their religious or gun agendas accomplished has been okay.
Do they stay under the same umbrella? OTOH if a faction of the GOP is not defined by Trumpism some religiously conservative minority voters who went with Biden because such was not okay with them could flip over.
I think it will happen quickly, especially after yesterday. trump got the party to stick with him partly because they were afraid of pissing off his rabid followers, partly due to his sheer bullying. But what has trump done for the Repub party? They lost the House in 2018, largely due to trump being trump; he lost reelection; and now they lost the Senate, almost exclusively due to trump’s meddling. The last president who did that much carnage to his party was Herbert Hoover. trump has thrown every Repub leader who was ever loyal to him under the bus. And now, he’s incited a riot of his loony followers overrunning the Capital, killing 4 in the process.
What else can trump do to become persona non grata in the Repub party-- actually start shooting people on 5th Avenue?
Most of this thread was posted before the events that began around 2:30 yesterday, but I think that changes the answer.
I might be wrong, but I think anyone involved with yesterday’s fiasco will be booted from party leadership. That includes, aside from Trump, Josh Hawley, Mo Brooks, TedCruz, etc. So who does that leave? Pence, obviously. Maybe McConnell. Maybe a place-holder like Romney or Sasse, not as a potential candidate, but just someone to nominally lead the party.
But these members aren’t currently in party leadership. Hawley, Cruz, and Brooks hold no official party leadership positions that they could be booted out of. Their “leadership” stems from their base of followers, not from any positions they hold within the party. Not that there weren’t Republican party leaders who were culpable – Keven McCarthy and Steve Scalise both voted to sustain the objections.
But that assumes the GOP “leadership” has power outside of their ability to get re-elected without Trump’s cult. I could see Trump losing his grip on his followers, but at least the early signs I’m seeing on Twitter and Facebook is that none of them blame him for anything, and they’ll punish any RINOs (defined as someone without their lips attached to Trump’s ass (which fortuitously is large enough to accommodate all of them)).
After what happened yesterday, I believe 2020 is the last time that those 75 million will vote as a block. The alliance between pragmatic Republicans and crazy Republicans likely won’t survive the next two years, if not the next two weeks.
Focus on the House with this in mind, most concern by a pragmatic about primary challenges for not being crazy enough.
Can a pragmatic one who distances withstand a primary challenge? Even now most self identified Republicans are Trump allegiant not party or policy loyalists.
I hope you’re wrong. After yesterday, I think most Republicans are going to be spouting the “I voted for the policy, not the man” justification. Then again, I’ve always underestimated how much shame a human being can live with.
I simply don’t understand how you and others of similar ideas can continue to be so optimistic. How many times does it need to be proven that these people are not redeemable. They have no values other than greed and grievance. They exist solely as opposition to anything fair and honest. It’s not even political anymore. It’s reflex, they are collectively sociopathic.
I wasn’t that optimistic until heard several GOP senators effectively burn their bridges with Trumpworld last night. They know their voters better than I do. They are gambling that they can win their next primary without what remains of the Trump loyalists in 2, 4, or 6 years.
Senate is different than the House. Whole state and six years both help. And still you had some calculate Trumpism will do them well.