Post-Trump Republican Party

Politics and religion
1

I thought I’d create this thread for discussion of what the Republican party will be and should be after the election.

I’m a registered Republican although I haven’t found many Republican candidates to vote for in a while.

It is my belief that Trumpism – which I will use as a short hand for xenophobic authoritarianism and other reactions to demographic change – will continue to own the current Republican party for a generation. The small-government/anti-regulation Republicans, the social conservatives, and the global leadership Republicans will all have to decide what their role in the Republican party will be going forward. I don’t think these factions, even joined together, will be strong enough to wrest control of party institutions from the Trumpists. Will they be content to be the “sane” wing of the party, despised by their Trumpist peers? Will they decamp to the Democrats and try to ally with centrists there to influence the course of the country? Or will they try to form (or take over an existing) third party. In so doing, how will they handle their own internal divisions?

2

If this happens, what will the business class Republicans do- my guess is that they’d try to hijack the Democrats, and would suddenly support social justice causes heavily to try and get minorities to vote against their economic interests the same way they did with the lower-income Republicans.

That said, if that happens, I suspect the Bernie Democrats could become Republicans in such a scenario- and then you would really have Mississippi politics on a national scale.

3

Well, I don’t know what will actually happen, but what should happen is the mainstream GOP kicks the Freedom Caucus to the curb and starts making deals with Hillary to get center-right shit passed, daring them to let the Dems have the Speakership if they don’t like it.

It’s more likely, though, that the House doubles-down on obstructionism, voting only to keep the government running, and then only at the last minute, in an attempt to run out the clock and deny Hillary any policy progress, so that they can claim she’s all talk again in 2020.

4

Supporting your contention that Trumpism will persist, a Bloomberg poll taken just before the debate finds that 76% of Republicans approve of Trump. When asked which leader better represents their view of what the Republican Party should stand for, 51% picked Trump, while 33% picked Paul Ryan.

There’s a real chunk of the party that wants what Trump represents (but not necessarily the man himself, the loser - only 38% say they’ll stay loyal to Trump if he loses.)

5

Perhaps a slow and deliberate separation of social conservatism and a more inclusive party toward younger and non-white voters? I mean, that would be the best case, right? I don’t think it will happen, though, not even slowly. The party will instead just coalesce on a more well-spoken candidate that balances the crazy with the old-school in some sort of temporary truce.

6

I’ve always wondered what would occur if the republican party would distance itself from the evangelicals. I know Bush courted them and many credit that for him winning, but I can tell you that minus the social conservatism, I’d likely be a republican.

What happens if they drop them? I just don’t see them going en masse to the democrats.

7

I don’t think they can, honestly. All they can do is slowly introduce more candidates who would be willing to not cater to the socially conservative talking points. And nobody wants to do that these days for fear of losing that voting block.

In the very distant past, I voted republican. I was freshly out of college and serving in the military. As I learned that it’s all a show for steering a mass of voters while doing the exact opposite of what they spoke of, I just simply … stopped voting Republican. Not just due to social issues either, by the way. Things like being fiscally responsible, while continually adding to the largest spend of our budget (military) just soured me on any and all things the party said it stood for.

I’ll summarize this with something mentioned often: The more schooled voters become, the higher tendency for them to vote democratically.

8

One thing about Paul Ryan, though, is that everyone hates him. He’s unpopular with NeverTrumpers for endorsing Trump while simultaneously unpopular with Trump supports for not seeming to have supported him nearly enough. He’s unpopular for Congress getting nothing done. As much as there’s this constant effort to prop him up as the reasonable mainstream Republican the reality is the base just doesn’t like him. Which is one of the huge problems with the party, they can’t seem to find anyone that the majority of the party members actually like.

9

To be blunt, Trumpians will need to die off for massive change to take place. They’re the heels of progress, and therefore get dragged kicking (and occasionally screaming) while being led by the rest of society.

That said, the Supreme Court will be transformed pretty quickly (especially if Democrats win back the Senate) and that will at least grease the skids a bit.

10

Why not? I guess as long as they get to control the Speakership and the committees that gives them some amount of power, but at some stage, especially if there’s a progressive caucus that starts making noise, the centrist Dems are ideologically closer to the main wing of the GOP than the Tea Party is. I mean, you could imagine Ryan stepping down because of the shittiness of his job and someone from the GOP’s “left wing” stepping forward with an appeal to Dems in conservative-leaning districts to basically form a bi-partisan caucus. Obviously, it doesn’t happen without support from Hillary, but I don’t know that it’s impossible.

11

I tend to believe this was more a year lead by the cult of Trump. Pull him out of the equation and the party, while still too far right, is at least much more civil about it. Without Trump I think the noise goes into the background again waiting for another outspoken mess to rally them.

I don’t think Trump’s followers are necessarily the evangelicals, that is not what I am seeing here. I think he grabbed a portion of the far right and a large chunk of the hate Hillary right. But he also lost what may be called the “rational” right.

Running to the far right in the primaries, and then running even farther right in the general election, that’s no way to win in November.

12

Trump is not some kind of political spontaneous combustion, he is the love child of the former Republican party and the Tea Party, that they so willingly embraced. They are not going to be able to just dump Trump and fix things. Its now too ingrained in their party and their platform and if they want to move more to the center its going to take some political bloodletting.

13

I’m pretty sure I’m going with some new party in the future, as will most of the sane GOP folks, and the money.

Remember, the money folks care about the money… they aren’t inherently racist or sexist or anything. Those views were merely seen as a tool to use towards their ends (staying rich). So they won’t have any trouble bailing on the racists, now that they’re seen as not being a viable path to power.

14

Do you think Trump as a loser is going to stick with politics for the next four years? Do you think the RNC is going to do anything to encourage Trump for the next four years?

Other than probably sending out stupid and nasty tweets I doubt you see anything tied to the RNC from the Donald. I don’t think his ego will let him play the noble losing statesmen of the party.

15

While I agree that the evangelicals are not prima facie Trumpist, I totally disagree that the party will spring back from the far right when Trump is gone. I think the Freedom Caucus/Tea Party will totally be subsumed by Trumpism. Their energy was never about cutting taxes or cutting the government; it was always about resisting Obama. Proto-Trumpism is what knocked Cantor out in his primary; post-Trump Trumpism will be even more powerful. They will have the election stolen by the criminal Hillary to rally around.

It’s hard to predict who the leading Trumpist political figures will be, but I’m sure opportunists like Cruz will embrace it to exploit the grass-roots fervor. I think that all but the most principled evangelicals will end up siding with Trumpists within the party because of their shared belief in the primacy of culture concerns.

16

Doesn’t look good for the Republican party.

17

Hilarious that there are so many idiots who think the future of the party is literally the same two guys who are about to get obliterated.

This is the problem with the GOP. They are made of fucking imbeciles who don’t know how to consume data and make rational decisions. They are incapable to learning from their mistakes.

After 2012, the non retarded wing of the party put together a detailed report about what the party needed to do, and then this cycle they threw it out the window.

This is why i can’t deal with the party any more, because i can’t stand such obtuse and stubborn ignorance.

18

Huh. That’s interesting. There was some speculation, when Pence was announced, that he was figuring his national standing within the GOP would rise despite the expected Trump loss. Maybe he was right.

19

Truth. The report was fantastic. It clearly outlined what was happening, why, and what needed to be done to avoid further slippage. Everyone even remotely interested in this topic should read it.

http://goproject.gop.com/RNC_Growth_Opportunity_Book_2013.pdf

[quote]
The GOP today is a tale of two parties. One of them, the gubernatorial wing, is growing and
successful. The other, the federal wing, is increasingly marginalizing itself, and unless changes
are made, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election
in the near future.

Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. States
in which our presidential candidates used to win, such as New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada,
Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Florida, are increasingly voting Democratic.
We are losing in too many places.[/quote]

[quote]
The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself. We have become expert in how to provide
ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be
persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.

Instead of driving around in circles on an ideological cul-de-sac, we need a Party whose brand
of conservatism invites and inspires new people to visit us. We need to remain America’s
conservative alternative to big-government, redistribution-to-extremes liberalism, while building
a route into our Party that a non-traditional Republican will want to travel. Our standard should
not be universal purity; it should be a more welcoming conservatism.[/quote]

But fuck that! Mexicans and Muslims are rapists, criminals, and terrorists! Gays are undermining traditional marriage! Obamacare! Blue lives matter!

20

No, I dont. You missed the point, which was not about Trumps political future, lose and he has none. You focused on “dump Trump” when “fix things” was the important part. The point was about the Republican party and the thought that they will make some kind of quantum leap to center after Trump loses. As I said, they wont, the effects of the Tea Party and evangelistics will still have a grip on the party. People like Pence and Cruz are not going away. They will use Trumps defeat to strengthen their position. They will dump Trump, they just wont dump Trump and fix things that way. Trump may linger like a bad hangover ( kind of like Sarah Palin did ) but he wont be important to the party any longer.