Todays Republican party is turning fascist. The Democrats see this and think they have a monopoly on sanity. With el donald’s loss in the midterms, many republican politicians seem to be distancing themselves from him. The hard-core MAGA base is not likely to ever leave. We could see a split, giving us three parties.
It has been a long time since the US has seen a third party win anything. It was, in fact, the birth of the Republican party that led fairly quickly to something called the Whigs fading into obscurity. Many voters seem to be repelled by republican fascism but cannot bring themselves to be Democrats. They seem like fertile ground for a new party of the center.
We could see an interim period where two of the three parties need to form a coalition. The one that cannot work with anyone else would get frozen out.
Remember we have first past the post voting in the U.S. So if a Democrat gets 40% of the vote while MAGA Republicans get 30% and traditional Republicans get 30% the Democrat is going to win.So the liberal guy with 40% beats the 60% who prefer someone more conservative. So I see the same thing happening as with the Whigs–one group will win and other fade away.
An additional issue, if there was a “divorce” in the Republican party: who keeps the money?
In fact, it was/has been my opinion that one of the reasons Trump didn’t take MAGA entirely for himself was that by co-opting the Republicans (and putting his own in RNC positions) he could spend all of their money for himself, with zero effective pushback. Any splintering would fight over remaining funds, and cripple their own fundraising. Something Republicans were very aware of and decided to go supine over.
IMHO - in order for a multi-party system to work, the Democrats would need to splinter into 2+ groups themselves at nearly the same time. Something MORE likely given their broad tent approach. Which would probably end up with a Progressive party (largely former Democrats), a Green Party (mostly democrats), a Centrist party (a big mix of more socially conservative Democrats and socially liberal Republicans, both often fiscally conservative), a new-ish Tea Party (don’t spend on anything), and MAGA/authoritarians, plus maybe an explicit Christian Nationalist party.
But to me, the money says it will never happen. Easier to lobby/bribe two groups than a half dozen.
The big problem, to me, is that the most radical 15 or 20 percent of each party is determining the direction of that party. I, for one, would welcome a party that can find a sane and workable median between the two extremes.
It could be just as easy for Republican party leadership to move much more heavily towards the common-sense conservative view, as to try to calve off a common-sense conservative separate party. The nastier elements currently enjoying their time in the sun could either go back under their rocks, or themselves try to split off; in the second case they would shrivel and die in a short time from lack of new blood. This country is not comfortable with more than 2 parties, especially since we are not parliamentary.
That process took only 2 years, when the Republican party was officially established in 1854 and the Whigs ran their last candidates in 1856. This happened over the issue of slavery (and possibly states rights). I don’t know if we have issues currently that are as decisively divisive as that was then, and lacking any such it makes that a difficult precedent to repeat in the present day.
A new party, whichever did not keep the title Republican, would have to establish new party structures in all the states, registering and so on, in order to become competitive. They would be at a disadvantage for some time, without large infusions of cash. That cash would not come for free.
This would be the biggest obstacle, IMO, and is what would make a GOP schism today be very different from the Whig demise, which was 170 years ago. The two major parties are far more entrenched today than they were in the 1850s; their size and power, at the state level as well as the national level, and the amount of control they have over the election process, gives the GOP a tremendous structural advantage over any offshoot/upstart conservative party.
Which is why it would be better for sanity to resume control of the current Republican party, and allow the cave-dwellers to try to establish their own new party.
Republicans won’t split until they get the Tea Party-MAGA fever out of their systems. That wing dominates the primaries that nominate the candidates.
Now it’s fortunate that Trump has shown that he’s not particularly effective in rousing his supporters unless he himself is on the ballot, and there are no acolytes who possess his peculiar mix of crowd-pleasing charisma and utter lack of ethics. And maybe in 2028 everyone will be simply too exhausted to watch another three-ring circus of a campaign and we’ll end up with something like Al Gore vs. Mitt Romney. Who knows?
This has been in large part a result of Trump’s power at the polls, since his first victory in 2016. I think the wind has gone pretty decisively from his back and is now turning into a headwind (to belabor a metaphor). At least I hope so.
To answer the OP’s question, I don’t believe that a two-party system, such as it exists in the US, can ever be viable. It is structurally deficient and needs to be changed.
I repeat myself a lot on this issue, I know, but the US desperately needs a viable* multi-party system. Until that happens we will have moderates supporting candidates they are repelled by (e.g. centrist GOPers getting behind Trump) because the structure of the system doesn’t allow for them to usefully vote for anyone else other than their party’s candidate or an arch-enemy across the aisle and they are loathe to do that.
I mean, geeeez… give the people something they can vote for other than immoral jerks in their party or the party diametrically opposed to the voter’s philosophy.
Would Trump have ever been elected if conservatives had had a viable* third-party choice?
Why should centrist Democrats be weighed down by the ultra-left in their party? Why should progressive Dems be weighed down by the more conservative people in their party?
*NOTE: by viable I mean a party that could actually win, not the silly spoiler “parties” we have now like the Libertarians and Greens (not that those parties are themselves necessarily silly, it’s the system that is silly.)
Before primaries, the parties chose candidates based on what they saw as electability. Now primaries seem to be the most rabid, hard-line party members choosing the candidates because they’re the most likely to be motivated to vote in a primary election.
So you get candidates who are often ideologically pure, but not necessarily electorally favorable. See Ken Paxton for a good example of what amounted to primary purity testing did for Texas Republicans. Nobody sane would have dreamed of pushing Paxton over Cornyn, but that’s what the party extremists did.
I kind of almost feel like primaries are a bad idea and we’d be better off with the parties going back to the old smoke-filled room to choose candidates. At least then, it would be by people who have electability as a first consideration.
Primaries have found electability in the strangest places.
No party boss would have picked Trump or Obama to be the face of their respective parties but primaries revealed that both had appeal that broke sharply with the conventional wisdom of the time and carried them from the primary into the general and even down the ballot. It also revealed their ability to campaign in a media environment that was very unfamiliar to old guard party leadership.
They of course have huge misses. Party bosses would never have overlooked Biden’s age in 2020 the way the voters did.
Ba-da-bing! Drum roll: I give you Kamala Harris. She was a double minority and not only would have been the first woman ever elected but only the 2nd Black ever elected. I think a white male might have beaten Trump.