Repost: Unfortunately, what I wrote in 2018 bears reposting in 2021:
In the US the Republican Party is going over a cliff. They have tied their fate to Donald Trump, a brainless wonder with no moral centre. That can only end badly. But Trump is more effect than cause.
Republicans no longer follow democratic norms:
- In the press, they rely on propaganda, not facts.
- On the campaign trail, they rely on a cult of personality, not ideology.
- At they ballot box, they rely on voter suppression, not majority votes.
- In Congress they rely on obstruction, not compromise.
Even before Trump: Mitch McConnell was already obstructing Congress, Fox News was already spewing propaganda, and Republicans on the Supreme Court had already gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This is not normal: A functioning party in a democracy will compromise to get laws and budgets passed, not bring the country to the brink of default on its public debt. A functioning party that starts losing elections will broaden its message to appeal to more people – not try to strip those people of their votes.
Science and stuff: There used to be a set of facts, stuff like science and news reporting, that both parties more or less agreed on. Their differences were philosophical. But now the Republicans have become largely cut off from reality by Fox News propaganda, Trump’s tweets, and their own echo chamber of fear mongering. So much so that the US government now seems to think that the greatest threat to the nation is a few thousand Honduran refugees – something the US used to take in stride without calling out the army.
Republican Bubble: Cable news and the Internet allow people to know more about the world than ever before. But they also allow people to withdraw into filter bubbles where they hear only what they want to hear – reality à la carte.
Southern Strategy ad absurdum: The Republicans used to stand for stuff like family values, balanced budgets, and national security. All that is gone. The religious right no longer even demands moral leadership. What remains is the naked capitalism of the Republican donor base and the naked racism of their voter base.
Demographic death: As if all that was not bad enough, the Republican Party has tied itself so closely to White racism that it faces demographic death: by the 2040s Whites will be a minority. Doubling down on racism, as Trump has done, can only work for so long.
Three main ways this could go:
- Republicans go extinct, like the Whig Party in the 1850s. A new right-wing party rises from the ashes.
- Republicans go democratic and broaden their message to appeal to more than half the people, presumably after some shocking defeat wakes them up.
- Republicans go fascist and destroy what is left of democracy. This is the direction they are headed in now with voter suppression, Citizens United, Orwellian propaganda, and their cult of personality.
A large number Whites seem to believe not so much in democracy as White rule.
– Abagond, 2018.
See also:
- The midterms
- Republicans – written in 2006!
- The Southern strategy
- The Republican bubble
- Fox News
- Sinclair News
- Donald Trump
- Mitch McConnell
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- Citizens United
- fascism
- Whig Party
- Know-Nothing Party
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An introspective piece penned by a social conservative.
There are still good people who are conservative that we can disagree with but not enough of them to save the Republican party.
https://johnjalsevac.com/2021/01/12/why-im-so-angry/
“At some point Trumpism went from a political movement, to a political cult. I want out. I want everybody I know and love and respect to get out. I want to get back to the time when Christians and conservatives knew what they stood for. When we didn’t bend over backward to defend the indefensible. When our heroes and allies weren’t a collection of swamp creatures. When we knew better than to give absolute loyalty to any man. When we knew that culture, and family, and faith mattered far more than politics. When we valued and recognized goodness, decency, loyalty, truth, kindness, integrity, courage. When we knew that character is destiny.”
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For now I think that the Republican Party will go through an internal crisis and some form of power struggle at the top will begin to unfold.
The division between that party and the Democratic Party will be to some extent “imported” or “internalized” by the Republican Party, somehow like what happens during the primaries.
As Donald J. Trump quits the presidency, his grip onto the party will loose a lot of strength and some other prominent individuals will try to replace him at the top of the party, probably arguing that the “story” of the “stolen elections” was just an useful tool which must be left in the past, as the future requires new and more competitive ideas. The number of Trump loyalists will begin to falter as time goes and Trump himself will be loosing influence inside the party.
One can ask: “How do you know all that?”
The answer is simple: “Well, it already happened in other of the world. Universal human nature, again, at display!”
Note – This was a time “zoom in” compared to the time frame where Abagond is looking at. Surely after the Trump era, new struggles will came to the arena for new generations of republicans to to prepare for.
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I am hoping the Republican Party will just combust into flames. It’s always been conservative and racist, but now it just filled with Q-Anon nut jobs and reprehensible, feckless cowards and sycophants and evangelical hypocrites. It needs to fall off the precipice and into a fiery abyss. But it will probably reinvent itself to become something more malignant and horrible than it was from the beginning.
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The Republican Party is the Party of Trump. They are not afraid of Trump, they are Trump, They are the traitorous, seditious mob. And again Trump will be acquitted.
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