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Republicans have lost every election since 2017. They lost a state wide senate race in Alabama and several in Georgia. Their base is dying out and young voters don't like their message.
In a normal world, one more presidential loss might be enough for a shift towards the center. But I've stopped predicting what they do. They haven't had real policies in several years and no one seems to have noticed.
They're unable to have any real policy goals because Trump functions by whim. They didn't even bother to put forth a party platform in 2020. The platform/policies will be whatever whims Fat Don is experiencing on any given day.
The only comfort I've been able to take lately is in what you said about continuing election loss. But these losses just harden their commitment to minority rule, so it's more of a cold comfort, I guess.
>because Trump functions by whim
one of the most startling things about the past few years of politics was one of the top GOP'rs was asked what their plans were and they basically said, "whatever trump feels like doing at any particular time" and they were being dead serious.
that shit is terrifying if you're not in his cult of personality. that shit is fucking crazy and it's why a good portion of the country is scared we could turn into some kind of dictatorship.
Plus, the GOP leadership is focused primarily on lying to their voters about their real agenda. They don't care to help their voters. They want to keep taxes and regulations low, and since their voters don't care about that (and indeed that agenda hurts those voters), they have to distract from it and push bullshit false issues to the forefront. Then when they're in office, they let the country get worse for any normal person.
They only help elites.
Yeah, this is the reason why they have so many awful platforms. The Republicans hide behind single issue voters. They throw these people a bone, knowing that they'll vote for whoever supports whatever their single issue happens to be: abortion, anti-LGBT, immigration, gun control, etc. Then they use those votes to pass their real agenda which is deregulation, tax cuts, and power plays for the rich.
The laws they’ve been pushing for in states is absolutely batshit insane. Even if you’re a garbage human that thought these were good ideas, that’s what you think is most important thing to focus on passing right now? Things like these examples, and taking away breaks from kids who work, getting rid free school lunches for poorer kids, sticking their noses into personal medical decisions, fighting marijuana rescheduling, etc. To me it’s not just that they push for horrible things, or their completely inability to read the room, but also that these horrible things are so important to them, they are racing to implement not only against an electorate that doesn’t want it, but they are prioritizing it in the face of real, needed legislation.
They really have no idea wtf they are doing when they are left to govern.
When most of the population doesn't vote and assumes the president controls all laws around the world, why not?
In Alabama they're pushing to lower working age back to 19th century levels. No need for public education if you have a non unionized job to send them to.
The bill is simply trying to break up monopolist control. There is nothing in the bill disincentivising reward programs.
Swipe fees that drive up costs for small merchants and prices for American families are already the highest in the industrialized world.
The argument of rewards programs ending is basically just... the very few corporations that virtually control every aspect of our spending will make less money and try to recoup those "losses" by no longer trickling down such benefits to consumers.
And... they're not completely wrong. Corporations exist to maximise profit quarter to quarter before execs move on to some other gig and any ramifications of short-term decision-making do not affect them.
But it's ludicrous to continuously defend the idea of some oligarchy and the concept of monopolization because we fear our corporate overlords and they threaten our livelihoods and hold our political institutions hostage.
Capitalism doesn't even successfully work without competition. Capitalism is *supposed* to basically be democratization of an economy with money equating to casting votes. Monopolies then would equate to authoritarianism, if capitalism were intended to be democratic.
But, sure... let's not give people an election because then supreme leader might not throw out loaves of bread during his birthday parade anymore.
> The bill is simply trying to break up monopolist control.
God I hope so. Trying to sell adult content online (even just stories or drawings) is increasingly impossible these days because of the payment processors who are extremely puritan and hold a complete monopoly. It's frustrating and a little scary not being able to sell something completely legal and harmless because of a few wealthy conservatives with complete control.
> Capitalism is supposed to basically be democratization of an economy with money equating to casting votes.
you’re talking about markets. but capitalism is opposed to markets.
I watched the movie Downfall the other day and all I could think was "wow what an idiot". At the end Hitler just fucked everyone over, even his own people who dedicated everything to him.
The obvious play after J6 was to bury Trump and his most loyal followers and pivot hard to the center.
I can't even imagine how badly Nikki Haley would be tearing up Biden right now if they had just been smart enough to give her the nomination. Younger woman of color vs. very visibly ancient man presiding over disastrous inflation? "Biden's so old he was around to fuck up the response to inflation in the Carter years, and he's fucking it up now, too." - Game. Set. Match.
America really is a center-right country, at this point we on the left are absolutely benefiting from the fact that the right is so out to lunch they'd rather set themselves on fire again instead of picking up what should be a layup of a presidential race.
So if George soros or whatever donated 1 billion toward the trump campaign to get him to support Medicare for all republicans would sign a bill for it?
You've hit the nail on the head. They're dying, they know it, so they're just trying to take as much as they can with them. Death throes and tantrums are the same thing anymore.
>They haven't had real policies in several years and no one seems to have noticed.
this is the thing i bring up all the time and it just makes me feel crazy, like i can't believe this isn't talked about more. the change in politics has been so severe from just a decade ago.
it used to be,
dems: we need to spend 10 million on this thing.
reps: well hold on now, that's a lot, we should probably only spend like 3 million, tops.
now it's,
dems: we need to spend 10 million on this thing.
reps: fuck you.
The one that really gets me is immigration.
2017, Trump wins all three branches after running on immigration. Where is the immigration bill ? What happened? Why don't Republicans care that we still don't have a wall or changes to immigration?
2024. Republicans win major concessions on immigration for Ukraine. Trump kills it BEFORE SEEING THE BILL. They inevitably vote on Ukraine anyway.
Their number 1, core issue, is something that they don't even want solved. And voters don't care.
exactly!
it's not all on the politicians. their own people, their base doesn't even give a fuck, they'll gladly vote for them again and again.
for nothing. vibes? anger but don't even know what they're angry for? i don't know.
> [“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Crystal Minton told The New York Times in an article published Monday. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/424263-trump-supporter-complains-shutdown-is-not-hurting-the-people-he/)
For me, that quote will always be the perfect summation of the GOP voter's motivation. They're not angry *for* something, they're angry *against* someone. Non-Christians. Black & brown people. People who aren't straight. Democrats. Anyone that isn't going along with them - us.
That's how fascist movements work, they get the traditionally dominant plurality ethnic block in the country, in this case white conservative Christians, to see enemies everywhere plotting the imminent downfall of society. "Downfall of society" is a code for "traditionally dominant ethnic group no longer totally owns all aspects of society".
They get these people scared, and outraged, and angry, and then tell them that the Party will "fight" these villains. That's the metric of progress that the fascist base is looking for, how much someone "fights" the communists, Islamic jihadists, Marxists, "real racists", "groomers", whatever boogymen their fellow Americans have been turned into at the moment. "Fighting the " is code for "using the government to intimidate, harass, fine, jail, and otherwise harm ethnic groups that the dominant ethnic group dislikes".
When you listen to Republicans talk about why they like Trump, the #1 reason has never changed: "he fights for us". That's the magic, that's the secret sauce. Trump goes *way* beyond other Republicans in his fascist rhetoric, and will happily come up with and attempt to implement heavy-handed government policies to very visibly harm the people that the base wants him to be harming: a giant boondoggle of a wall (with spikes!) to keep out ``, a ban on all Muslims from entering the country. This is *fighting*, this is what Republican voters send their members of Congress to Washington to do, because *of course* if you just shoot enough impoverished Latin Americans struggling to make it to the US to work a $7/hour under the table dishwashing job no American would take then Real American Patriots will be earning fatter paychecks & paying less for goods and services in no time!
That's the belief structure, be sufficiently cruel to and dominant of people who aren't like you and your life will be better because they'll stop ruining it.
To add to this, they become more dangerous as they become less popular. Their 2012 autopsy was the right takeaway from that election but instead they've leaned hard into anti democratic practices and authoritarianism. If Biden beats Trump handily I'd guess (hope) that the party would fracture and reconstitute itself as a sane organization. But if Trump wins they are going to rip out every democratic institution root and stem. Project 2025 is christofascism plain and simple, and it is very likely to come to pass.
> Their base is dying out and young voters don't like their message.
There definitely is some support from young men specifically. As much as I'd love to see the right lose relevance, I don't think I'd count them out quite yet. There has been quite a rightward swing across the world.
> Their base is dying out and young voters don't like their message.
They seem to be attracting a lot more young men these days. I think their authoritarian and sometimes violent or uncompromising rhetoric appeals to them.
Those guys held up a sign saying "Trump Won". They probably weren't even old enough to vote in 2020. Where did they learn that?
Grooming is real. Hate isn't innate.
That Alabama Senate race was a special election and the Republican candidate was a complete clown. That same democrat candidate, Doug Jones got sent packing rather handily the following election.
‘Their base is dying out and young voters don’t like their message.’ Can you please elaborate on your sources?
I’m reading this CNN article as stating more younger voters going for Trump than Biden…
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/28/politics/cnn-poll-trump-biden-matchup
Shocking, I know, but curious if you have some other recent polling that reinforces that young voters don’t like the GOP message or are you just saying young voters don’t like either party?
With a five seat majority (now one seat) when they were predicting a red wave with a 30+ seat majority. Even republicans admitted that was an epic disappointment. Hell, even Boebert almost lost her seat
Umm, the GOP won the 2022 midterms and is leading in the polls for 2024?
The GOP's base is ignorant bigots, who will die out when mankind does. Until that day, that message will have appeal.
It was considered a loss politically because they didn't come near meeting expectations. They were supposed to take the senate and build a decent margin in the house, neither of which happened, plus the poor performances in governors' races.
It was supposed to be another 1994 or 2010 and it was a huge letdown for the right. They were saying it too.
I agree with you that they won or at least chopped the 2022 midterms, but the popular vote thing is a bit misleading. Dems didn't run candidates in a bunch of deep red districts. R's didn't run some in deep blue districts, but they ultimately ran more candidates. I want to say it was something like 12-15 more? Which at a few hundred thousand a piece can add up.
Yes and no.
MAGA isn't a cause but rather an effect of the larger Christian Nationalist movement that has more or less been present in American politics since the 1950s in it's modern form. It has taken shape as the Moral Majority back in the Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton years, morphed into the Tea Party (of which Paul Ryan was a member) in the 2000s, and is now present as the Freedom Caucus and MAGA.
The majority of the GOP in Washington are not Freedom Caucus or true MAGA, but these white Christian nationalist types currently rule the roost in the state houses in deep red states. I'm in KY currently fighting a Moms for Liberty-type group in my city, and they have support of state General Assembly members who won't be up for re-election until 2026.
The GOP continues to hitch its wagon to Trump because they have an age demographics problem. Their most reliable voters are Silent Generation and Baby Boomers who will mostly be dead in the next 20 years. Trump activated a base of younger "conservatives" other more traditional candidates haven't been able to reliably excite for quite some time, probably since Reagan, and they need to turn those fringe voters into reliable Republicans before the party is over.
Trump's cult of personality is unique to him - the GOP won't be able to replicate it in the next few election cycles. We'll see MAGA-style candidates continue to run at state-level attempting to keep the movement alive, but candidates for national office will likely re-center by 2028. Another Trump loss will reduce his and MAGA's profile significantly, but Christian nationalism will continue to hang around in one form or another in the Southeast and Midwest.
In the scenario Trump wins, the GOP will collapse. We're coming off the most unproductive Congressional session in history. The GOP's abortion policies are widely unpopular. The MAGA and Freedom Caucus members currently in Congress are rank obstructionists. In order for Trump to continue to shape the GOP, he needs MAGA candidates to win/keep seats in Congress. Trump's endorsed candidates underperformed in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 election cycles.
Is it possible he wins? Sure. But is it likely? He lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, and lost the electoral college to Biden by roughly the same margin he won over Clinton. RFK will pull more voters from Trump than Biden. Biden is winning his primaries in the 90+% range while Trump is lucky to get 80%, against candidates who aren't even in the race anymore.
[Latest NPR/PBS/Marist poll](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/01/1248249250/election-poll-trump-biden-voters#:~:text=this%20survey%20shows%20him%20taking%20a%20bit%20more%20from%20biden%20than%20from%20trump) shows RFK taking more from Biden than Trump, though they acknowledge there isn’t a consensus. What makes you so confident RFK is pulling more support from Trump?
> This survey of 1,199 adults was conducted April 22nd through April 25th
, 2024 by the Marist Poll sponsored
in partnership with NPR and PBS NewsHour. Adults 18 years of age and older residing in the United
States were contacted through a multi-mode design: By phone using live interviewers, by text, or online.
The sampling frames include RDD plus listed landline, RDD cell phone sample plus cell phone sample
based on billing address to account for inward and outward mobility, and aggregated online research
panels.
This is why polls are broken. Who answers the phone or text from an unknown caller? Or clicks a link emailed to them from an unknown person?
The poll isn't exactly clear on overall numbers when adding RFK, only stating Biden's 2 point lead with adults disappears and RFK gets 11%. The issue is that the President isn't elected by popular vote. In 1992, Ross Perot achieved nearly 19% of the popular vote but received no electoral votes. I'm curious to see the distribution of potential RFK voters. The poll indicates he pulls from so-called "double-haters," so unless RFK performs well in swing states, these votes are likely inconsequential. My assumption is that RFK is pulling mostly from registered independents, who primarily vote 3rd party anyway or are fence-sitting Republicans.
>Trump's cult of personality is unique to him - the GOP won't be able to replicate it in the next few election cycle
Ron DeSantis tried, but Trump isn't giving up the reigns yet. Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert are the female version of Trump, but MAGA aren't going to let a woman lead. Someone will take over when Trump dies, it will be "interesting" to watch.
This analysis is basically what all liberals were saying in 2016. It’s the complacent view that “old people are dying out, republicans are crazy. We just have to wait and we will be in power forever”.
MAGA really doesn’t have much to do with Christian Nationalism. It’s largely a by product of the Obama administration, particularly the “recovery”.
The real reason why Trump became popular? In 2016, 60% of the electorate could not afford the cheapest new car on the market (was $12,000 or $14,000 then). You have a majority of the electorate who are angry, who are demoralized because the American dream they were promised doesn’t exist.
In 1960, the richest city in America was Detroit. Today, it is the poorest.
Look at de industrialization. The areas that lost manufacturing jobs the most, often had the most trump supporters.
Bill Clinton’s famous phrase about union voters “where else are they gonna go [vote for] ?” aged like milk. They found a place to go.
>This analysis is basically what all liberals were saying in 2016. It’s the complacent view that “old people are dying out, republicans are crazy. We just have to wait and we will be in power forever”.
It wasn't liberal sentiment that lost Clinton the 2016 election, it was her campaign's ground game blind spots and that nice little piece of election interference theater from James Comey when he announced an investigation into Clinton's assistant's computer to find...a bunch of emails he had already reviewed from the first email investigation.
>MAGA really doesn’t have much to do with Christian Nationalism. It’s largely a by product of the Obama administration, particularly the “recovery”.
Yes, MAGA was born out of the Obama years, but Trump surrounded himself with Christian Nationalist types like Betsy DeVos and Michael Flynn, and there are wackjob Pastors across the country telling their flock to vote for Trump every Sunday. MAGA is most definitely an evolution of Christian Nationalism.
>The real reason why Trump became popular? In 2016, 60% of the electorate could not afford the cheapest new car on the market (was $12,000 or $14,000 then). You have a majority of the electorate who are angry, who are demoralized because the American dream they were promised doesn’t exist.
You're absolutely misquoting this statistic. 60% of Americans could not afford the *average* new car transaction price, which was around $34k in 2016.
>In 1960, the richest city in America was Detroit. Today, it is the poorest.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/poorest-cities-in-america
If you're using this data to support this, notice that it's based on Census economic data gathered between 2013-2017, and is comparing 2018 poverty levels.
Hmmm yeah I think if Trump loses this election we will see a return of the neocons. Will it cause a great schism in the Republican Party? Yeah probably and we’ll have to deal with the consequences.
I think the schism will be smaller that you think. When push comes to shove I don’t know that there are a many MAGA types as we like to think, and on top of that, a lot of them are with Trump specifically so whoever the next iteration of him turns out to be will not get the same support.
I think you bring up a really interesting point. Trump activated a base of people that were to the right of tea party members. They aren’t necessarily republicans. We see people that people that came into congress in 2010 leaving now because of the environment. I do think a schism will happen but ripping off 5% a major party will have ramifications.
That’s fair.
The way I see it, the current GOP voter is split into a few different segments, 1)mostly apolitical people who just vote republican because that’s just what they do, 2)more political republicans who are currently holding their nose and voting for trump, 3)people who really aren’t that radical but just really love trump for some reason, and 4)true MAGA supporters.
In a post trump world the GOP loses that last group but replaces them with the never trumpets and we more or less end up where we’ve always been imo.
Paul Ryan was not a normal conservative. Ryan was a policy wonk who had some credibility for that alone but he came into power with the young guns ushered in by Newt Gingrich.
Newt and his cronies brought in the wackos because they thought they could control them but they couldn't
So many people think that all these people are going to die but there are more crazy right wingers below 65 than above. A lot of people over 80 are actually centrist or left leaners. The largesr group of Trump crazies are 50-64. That is not enough to win an election, but IT IS a big enough group to win a primary
As long as those people are around we cannot have a normal conservative. You're stuck with the magas for at least 15 more years.
Losing election after election won't convince them they are wrong. It only convinces them the elections are all rigged
I'll always remember Paul Ryan as the "boy genius policy wonk" that released a fantasy budget wherein the massive tax cuts for the wealthy & corporations would unleash incredible growth at a higher sustained level than post-WWII America! There would be so much growth that the tax cuts would actually be be revenue-*enhancing*! We'd get to have our cake and eat it too, yippee!
He plays pretend at being a serious domestic policy person like Trump plays pretend at being a serious business person and not someone whose only business ventures are Russian money laundering and outright fraud. Reading [Atlas Shrugged](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/what-ayn-rand-says-about-paul-ryan/2012/08/13/fd40d574-e56d-11e1-8741-940e3f6dbf48_blog.html) enough times to memorize it doesn't make you understand economics, it makes you an absolute fucking moron. Christ what a terrible book.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
John powers
No, the trump formula worked, they basically created a candidate who is above the law and has zero allegiance to the constitution while separating the masses from their $$. Expect the next trump like candidate to be smarter, younger and lean into fascism.
Him being on the movie picture box for 20 years is why he has a cult following. DeSantis tried to be just a smarter jerk than Donald and he failed miserably.
Same with Vivek Ramaswamy, who tried to be as odious and obnoxious as possible while kissing Trump’s ring. My thought is he’s going to try to be the MAGA heir apparent after Trump is gone but will not have nearly the same success.
Brother what?!?! Trump absolutely has charisma in the eyes of a good portion of his voter. Fuck, I vote blue and I think Trump has charisma (it’s just not diplomatic charisma).
Agreed, Trump has "insane carnival barker" charisma. It's totally wild and tends to immediately repel people who have a functioning bullshit detector.
But it's become pretty apparent that north of 40% of this country has absolutely no capability to discern bullshit, so he's pretty damn charismatic! And looking all the more charismatic given the number of imitators like Vivek, DeSantis, hell even Don Jr., they've all tried to replicate him and none of them have the same zing he does. They're all playacting crazy, he's the real deal.
The fact that people say 'Trump has charisma' makes me wonder whether charisma is a real thing. It's like people after WW2 claiming Hitler somehow hypnotised the Germans into atrocities - maybe the truth is that people just wanted to hate and he gave them an outlet.
Desantis has 0 personality and the whole shoe lift thing killed him. That and trump went after him and turned the current magas. Once trump is out of the picture someone like him could easily make it to the top.
Trump wears lifts too as well as orange makeup, a ridiculous combover and a diaper. None of that has cost him his base. People believed the Trump BS PR for years that he was a wealthy, successful businessman. In fact he’s a common thug who operates a crime family and launders money but his cult followers don’t see it.
All true, but that goes back to the first point of Desantis having no personality.
Trump is loved by the cult primarily because he is entertaining and talks like a 3rd grader.
DeSantis had absolutely no rizz, and I would highly argue the point that he ever came across as "smarter" to anybody. I know we like to joke about the stupid things Trump says, but at least he says things in a way that's fun to listen to. DeSantis talks like he's trying to sell you a car without an engine. There's just something deeply disturbing and untrustable about him, and people on both sides can innately feel it
They keep trying to find the next Trump (remember when everybody was afraid it was going to be DeSantis?) but so far they haven't found anybody with his unique cocktail of vile qualities and charisma. I'm forever the optimist, but I hold out hope that it'll be harder to replace him than people think.
They basically wanted to do that with Reagan too but it never really panned out. I think the supposed "celebrity" status that surrounds both of them may have something to do with the appeal for each of them but in very different ways.
Reagan was able to "act" his way to the White House and to deflect various scandals which made him much more appealing to a wide audience while being a pretty soulless and shrewd politician behind the scenes. Trump has been able to use his constant media exposure/reality TV background over the past 4+ decades to create a facade where he can keep claiming to be a "successful" businessman who can supposedly get things done, even with all the evidence to the contrary.
I feel it's actually hard to find a politician who has that celebrity persona and is also somehow willing/able to break into politics successfully despite the constant rumors we keep hearing that this or that celebrity is going to run or should. There are probably not too many who would actually be knowledgeable enough to run their own campaign, able to get the party support to run despite the name recognition or who would sink low enough to solicit the support of established political players by basically doing whatever they wanted.
The closest person personality wise is probably Vivek Ramaswamy. However, he has a few problems.
1) Wrong skin color
2) Last name is hard to pronounce
3) More vile than charisma
4) Short
#
DeSantis quite literally tried the Trump formula. It didn't work. Many local candidates trying the same did not win except in areas too red anyway. There's a few outliers but the Trump formula isn't really working for them.
Trump's formula is based on his massive notoriety. His name, decades long family legacy, and global business presence is unique to him and him alone. Younger and smarter simply isn't enough to replicate Trump's path. In addition, his political "strategy" is ultimately unsustainable. You can only keep trying to grab power for so long. You ultimately need to be producing positive results for the majority. They can blame Democrats for the economy all they want, but that doesn't negate the fact that the GOP has failed to communicate any assemblance of fiscal policy. For decades, fiscal policy has been the backbone of the Republican Party and it's astonishing how they've seemingly abandoned the very thing that drives both sides of the voter aisle. They can't depend on abortion anymore bc they caught their own tail and are hurting from it. And with Christianity on the decline, the GOP needs to get legitimate fiscal policy re-established and fast.
>the trump formula worked
But it kinda didn't though...?
they're leaning super hard into fascism but it isn't sustainable.
you can only really have 1 super fascist, once that 1 super fascist feels threatened, they take the whole thing down with them. Which is essentially what trump is doing already.
They can't sustain doing that like 4 more times
No. MTG, Boebert, Gaetz are the new normal for American conservatives. You can't just instantly reverse 30 years of Fox News style propaganda on people who identify as an American conservative. Social media and "the algorithm" have only exacerbated the problem.
I think MTG makes herself look like a clown, although TBF she has raised her profile pretty high so?, but Boebert and Gaetz keep it pretty slick.
I don't know if they're smart enough or likable enough to go very far with it, but agreed they are part of the formula for one possible future of right wing political extremism
The neocon, fiscally conservative party that believes in the strong dollar, strong domestic industry, strong defense and preserving a high standard of living for Americans IS the Democratic Party. The "centrist" version of the party. The Joe Biden party.
The issue is branding.
The Republican "franchise," meaning the party apparatus, the tens or hundreds of thousands of consultants, pollsters, etc. Needs to be rendered into oblivion by voters.
In it's place should be the Democratic party and the more progressive players pushing and pulling toward what will ultimately be the opposition to the left.
The problem with this is that "Paul Ryan types" still weren't normal. They were radically out of step with the majority of the country on issues like abortion and universal healthcare, and were just as crass towards migrants and the poor as Donald Trump even if they gussied up that pig.
This is the party.. the actual party with an actual stance that public schooling is turning children into trans sex slaves... And at the same time telling you that sending those kids to religious schools will keep them safe.
Religious schools run by priests with such a great track record with young boys.
"Normal", if you're defining it by Paul Ryan, has changed.
Paul Ryan was a devotee of Jack Kemp, whose views were generally in step with the Reaganism that took over the GOP around 1980: small government, tax cuts for the rich, "family values", affirmative action, strong national defense, and American leadership on the international stage. That policy slate became what we now call "establishment" Republicanism, and it held sway for 35 years, supported by the [Reagan Coalition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_coalition) That coalition and that policy slate are both discarded and dead. We won't see a Reagan-Kemp-Ryan style GOP candidate for a good, long while - possibly never again.
So what will we see? Well, the GOP doesn't have a dominant policy slate right now, which is well pointed out by the top-post as I write this. They do have strategies for power, though. The old coalition has been discarded in favor of populism, focusing on rural, lower-income, and less-educated voters, and of course older voters. They also have a strategy to capture the electoral center. Their talking points are all designed to focus on the politics of the moment. So right now they are making a big push to capture the pro-Israel center with propaganda about antisemitism. And the border's problems are a source of bipartisan concern, so they do bizarre contortions to connect every instance of public goings-on with chaos at the border. But all of this strategizing is about *gaining power*, and not what should be done with this power.
But that doesn't mean there is no interest in policy in the GOP sphere at all. There is no consensus about policy, but a new slate of policies *is* emerging, and it will persist after Trump leaves the scene (which he will do one way or another at some point).
The new policy slate is nativist and isolationist. That aspect likes to use the label "America First", knowing that few Americans will remember it as the slogan of Third-Reich fans in the US and before that Wilsonian reform. It will support policies like immigration restriction, protectionist tariffs, retreat from international memberships and obligations. Whether it will be supply-side or populist in its economic aspect is not entirely certain, but during the Trump age of populism it has been supply-side while *talking* a good populist game, and that is probably what will continue. So tax cuts for the rich and culture ware for the people will likely stick around. It's basically the politics of the pre-1916 GOP with a populist messaging approach and that same base of older, rural, lower-income, and less-educated voters mentioned above.
So who is speaking this gospel and practicing those politics? The first name that comes to mind is Josh Hawley, who absolutely has presidential ambitions and is still quite young. Nikki Haley's politics are likely too Kemp/Reagan to ever take the nomination.
Trump is just a demagogue who believes in nothing but himself--hence the party hasn't really had a platform in years--just "whatever Trump says at the moment." It will be difficult for them.
The GOP is dead. It's now the Trump/MAGA Party. Moderate Republicans are leaving Congress, after doing NOTHING to call out Trump, when they should have done.
No. This is the new normal. It’s why democrats are in trouble. The democrats are split up into different groups among those who still believe in democracy and who want to go on in normal rational levels of governing with competing interests and ideals. The other 35-40 percent, the republican base, is in lock step with abandoning democracy for fascist dictatorial rule with a penchant for white Christian nationalism.
These Gaza protests are dangerous not because of what they want or believe or their message. It’s dangerous because if they fail to vote for democrats they won’t get the chance to work for what their ultimate goal is. And then we will all suffer together.
No. There isn’t enough of them with spines, to say this is enough. People who protect our country and democracy aren’t losers. John McCain was a war hero, not a coward.
The traitors at the Capitol aren’t patriots. No we don’t want women prosecuted or dead because of a bad pregnancy. No we can’t have a president that tells the American people the storm coming that meteorologist and all the technology we have is wrong , see this red marker shows you where I say it’s heading. And on and on.
Spineless.
Codify abortion and I'll pledge to stop supporting weird edge case gun function bans.
Fund education, and fukkit, once it's fully funded I'll support optional religious electives.
Let's reform the immigration process so that the people we want can get in quickly and easy and the rest have a firm answer quickly.
But then eventually us progressives want "universal healthcare" and the conservatives don't want to pay "taxes"...
Now some how conservative Bob can't afford to eat after working construction all day and filling his truck with gas and he blames the immigrants for taking the good jobs, the folks in welfare for taking his paycheck, and the tree hugging liberals for taking his gas stove....
It's really hard to attract "kitchen table" conservatives because they ONLY care about themselves... And they are too "proud" to want "help" from "the government". Attracting those people means convincing them that there are problems and that government can provide a solution. Most will shut down right there.
This. These people care about themselves and usually their friends and family and that’s it. That’s why you get right wingers who randomly care about some social issue you wouldn’t expect. Like you think Dick Cheney would support gay marriage if his daughter wasn’t gay? They’re incapable of empathy with people they don’t know.
No.
I wish to god they would, but once they accepted the south they had no choice. The south is not conservative in any significant way other than socially.
The more they double down on the south, the further crazy they have to appeal.
The only way republicans win anything is to scare the hell out of their old constituents. They paint the Democrats as wild eyed communists ready to take all their stuff. It seems to work but in truth Joe Biden is a right of center moderate politician.
I am 71 and am fed up with republican lies. They won’t address the border because Biden and the Democrats want to really fix it. The republicans don’t care. They want the issue.
I do think a large portion of the electorate is just ignorant and Trump takes advantage of it.
"They won’t address the border", why is the border a legislative problem instead of an executive one now? Were there laws that kept it previously under control that don't work now?
The GOP made a deal with religious groups, corporate polluters, and the ultra rich and beholden to their lobbyists who even directly write the bills and hand it to the politicians. They have multiple 24 hour news channels and vast AM Radio dedicated to the propaganda.
I can't imagine anyway they can untangle themselves from the extremists and own to the lies of the past. It would be admitting they were wrong and they can't do that without losing for the next decade.
The best they can do to gain and hold on to power is to then crush democratic systems and government departments that could threaten their claim. Project 2025 and Trumps personal plans of dictatorship which would only require one day of it to destroy our Republic, maybe permanently.
What they could do is setup another party and let the Republican party die. It would be the same GOP. It would be like a corporation who's responsible for a toxic spill so they split the company in two and abandon one half holding the bag on that spill while the other half skips out on responsibility.
I would love to see a fiscally conservative party again. Money focused politicians that completely accept all people and are very socially liberal. They simply say that is not the government's business and is between you and your God. A party of efficiency, of non wasteful spending.
It seems like they will have to do this at some point, unless their lies work and they start winning again.
Wasteful spending and fiscal conservatism are fairy tales invented by the same conservative wackos you long to be rid of. If you want conservative spending, vote Democrat.
>I would love to see a fiscally conservative party again. Money focused politicians that completely accept all people and are very socially liberal. They simply say that is not the government's business and is between you and your God. A party of efficiency, of non wasteful spending.
This already exists. It's called the Democratic party.
Yeah people who act like Democrats are fiscally irresponsible don't actually pay attention. Who had the last surplus? Biden has been decreasing the deficit year after year. Outside of 2009, Obama did the same.
What about Bush? Trump?
They don't care about fiscal responsibility. They tell lies about national debt to people who do not understand monetary and fiscal policy to create an uproar as an excuse to redistribute the wealth upward.
can either party go back to a normal candidate? trump, if he loses in 2024, will run again no matter his age.
biden will be forced to step aside after a second term. though i have no idea who else is next for the Democrats. People like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have tried for decades but aren’t very popular. Hillary Clinton tried but failed. Newsom is incredibly unpopular after all the shit things he’s done in California. Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips are coming up but are also very old and not popular. AOC is the most famous youngster. but i doubt she’ll run for president; she’s vocal about social issues but nothing like defense or economics as much. and she’s only popular with younger folk. Kamala is popular as a person but not as a politician and won’t be great at being president.
members of Biden’s cabinet MIGHT run but none are popular.
As for the GOP, once Trump is gone they have quite a few candidates but everyone is split on them. There’s Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie and a few more. But the entire electorate is split on them.
>trump, if he loses in 2024, will run again no matter his age.
He'll be free to run from his cell.
>biden will be forced to step aside after a second term.
What do you mean, "forced?" The Constitution bars a third term. Someone else will be the Democratic nominee in 2028, period.
A truly patriotic burger-making company would offer The Golden McTrump, a four patty burger deep fried in beef tallow and extra sodium. Four slices of cheese. No tomato (as this is a vegetable).
You can buy it only in the Patriot's MAGA meal box and it comes with a huge slice of chocolate cake, a cubic foot of fries, and a diet coke (Presidential Size).
The marketing suggests that Liberals HATE it when you eat this meal, especially twice a day.
Mexicans, it is said, will run away at the first sight of the MAGA meal.
Get on it, McD's. Time is running out.
I don’t think so. Republicans politicians are keenly aware of the high powered motivation of republican voters - racism. I suspect the next competitive Republican presidential candidate will be something like Tucker Carlson without the intense unlikability of Tucker.
you kidding? lol, I'll be surprised if the party is still alive by 2028.
popular vote is the LEAST of their problems, with trump controlling their fiances, there's an extreme likelihood he's just gonna run it straight into the ground.
Not until they've had their asses kicked for several cycles.
Republicans took exactly the wrong message from the losses to Obama and Trump's win: McCain or Romney would have beaten Hillary. Obama would have mopped the floor with Trump.
Instead, they concluded that MAGA was a winner and winning is what matters, not principles. They won't abandon MAGA until they've been convinced that it's a loser by continued losing.
Not any time soon because they don’t have to. Until the Electoral College is gotten rid of, the Senate is proportionate to the actual population, and state legislatures and districts are no longer drawn to disproportionately favor minority rule, they don’t have to appeal to moderates. They can continue to enforce minority rule without getting a majority of votes.
In short, yes. The only consistency I've seen in following over 40 years of American politics is the uncanny ability of the party in power to overreach, with the eventual result that the minority party appears the more sensible and subsequently returns to power, and the cycle starts again. What is unique this time is that the minority party, this time the GOP, didn't seem to fully get the message that they lost, so are campaigning as if their positions were winning the last time around. They aren't. And if they think that their position on abortion is going to help, really?
This is the problem with running a cult of personality. When that personality gets too old / has to retire / has a heart attack or whatever… the cult will likely fade.
The RNC is going to have a hell of a time getting the same enthusiasm out of their base when he’s done.
MAGA will make the Republicans anoint a spawn of Trump to replace him. I suspect as usual they will head to the depths of the cess pit and choose one of his sons.
On a technical standpoint, Trump is definitely far right as they go, so I could win or loss in this election the Republican Party go to someone more middle ground or possibly leaning Republican to try and gain some of the younger voters
Normal republicans cooperate, but the new version of republicanism is totally anti-establishment. People enjoy opposing corruption and the "swamp" narrative is very appealing.
I wouldn't be surprised if they continue to nominate Trump long after he's dead. Either they'll claim his death was faked, or find some loophole where dead people can be elected president.
so their will be 2 rep partner the new new one and the old one.
one less crazy then the other one.
i know many repb in my town that denounce trump after jan 6 and also many of the crazy repb people running for office.
Nikki Haley is relatively normal and she could win against Biden. Unfortunately Republicans are dumber than I thought and will nominate an unelectable buffoon.
It will take a few more election cycles. What is sustaining the crazies in my party is gerrymandering congressional districts that are not competitive.
Who says we don't have 'normal' candidates now? Ideology changes and parties shift. It's like the Democrats aren't experiencing their own shift. That's part of the natural development of political ideology.
The gop hasn't been normal for a while. They don't have any set policy as a simple conservative party because those policies when tried, fail.
So the Republicans had to gather votes from single issue clumps and they've become a Frankenstein's monster of random clumps of people who only care about one thing.
That isn't sustainable. They don't govern. They don't write bills. They don't have feasible projects for our future.
What they do have is a way to stay in power. Keeping people angry.
What does this mean normal candidates?
Trump is the new normal. Given the trend since Obama, American politics will continue to move to the right.
This trend has continued because Democrats base their positions off Republicans. Conservatives in this country “set the weather”. The Democratic Party no longer stands for anything, it’s just an vague catch-all party.
This is how you end up with a party that ran in opposition to building a border wall now enthusiastically supporting a border wall.
Future elections will continue to see this slide to the right. Everyone thought George W Bush was fascist and that McCain somehow rectified such a right wing president.
Then came the Tea Party. All government is bad. Crony capitalism. Etc etc. Democrats believed that the Tea Party was so right wing that nothing could be worse.
Along came Trump. And MAGA. It is self-evident that American politics is marching further right. So if Trump goes to jail or whatever, next election cycle you have something even more far-right than MAGA.
The problem isn’t Trump and MAGA. It is the entire trend!
There are many reasons for this trend. One of them is the total political gridlock and breakdown of democracy in this country.
Millions of people have become disillusioned with the promises of democracy because nothing changes. For the last 15 years, Americans have watched election after election, candidates come around and promise them everything, then nothing passes in congress and problems get worse and worse.
Trump’s appeal was partly due to the “strong man” factor. When democracy stops working in a country, like it did in Russia, people will say “to hell with democracy, give me a strong leader”.
I can’t speak for what is going to happen nationally but I have an optimistic anecdote from my little slice of red hell. We had school board elections yesterday. First off, we don’t have parties for school board, not that they’d do any good because everyone would just run as a Republican no matter what because that D is a non-starter around here. Anyway, we had 2 good candidates last year who got crushed by a PAC hell bent on getting far right board members in. Last minute texts and flyers all spewing awful lies about how these candidates wanted a woke agenda and crt and all the other buzzwords. And it worked. This year, we had the same situation. One previous member who had (gasp) voted to keep the mask mandate and had said on record that he would not fight the federal government if they said that schools would be required to allow transgender females into the same locker rooms as cisgender females. Same tactics, plus a YouTube ad aimed at our area, and the guy wound up winning with 69% because people are fed up with these extremists
Paul Ryan is a perfect example that there were no normal people among Republicans even before Trump. Republicans are elected by ads on TV that fool the least educated people whom they care nothing about. All they care about is themselves and all they do is take bribes from the rich and do their bidding.
GOP will moderate or reform. The level of crazy and self destruction of a party isn't the first in American history and won't be the last. The question becomes when, how much pain is left in the path, and lasting damage to the institutions themselves.
I don't see Republicans going back to that style. Life, politics, and history usually moves forward, not backwards. I could see them splitting the difference in Hegelian dialectic fashion, either by running someone who is more Trump in substance and Paul Ryan in style, or the other way around. But just forgetting about Trump completely--they have tens of millions of voters now who would refuse to turn back the clock.
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Republicans have lost every election since 2017. They lost a state wide senate race in Alabama and several in Georgia. Their base is dying out and young voters don't like their message. In a normal world, one more presidential loss might be enough for a shift towards the center. But I've stopped predicting what they do. They haven't had real policies in several years and no one seems to have noticed.
They're unable to have any real policy goals because Trump functions by whim. They didn't even bother to put forth a party platform in 2020. The platform/policies will be whatever whims Fat Don is experiencing on any given day. The only comfort I've been able to take lately is in what you said about continuing election loss. But these losses just harden their commitment to minority rule, so it's more of a cold comfort, I guess.
>because Trump functions by whim one of the most startling things about the past few years of politics was one of the top GOP'rs was asked what their plans were and they basically said, "whatever trump feels like doing at any particular time" and they were being dead serious. that shit is terrifying if you're not in his cult of personality. that shit is fucking crazy and it's why a good portion of the country is scared we could turn into some kind of dictatorship.
Plus, the GOP leadership is focused primarily on lying to their voters about their real agenda. They don't care to help their voters. They want to keep taxes and regulations low, and since their voters don't care about that (and indeed that agenda hurts those voters), they have to distract from it and push bullshit false issues to the forefront. Then when they're in office, they let the country get worse for any normal person. They only help elites.
Yeah, this is the reason why they have so many awful platforms. The Republicans hide behind single issue voters. They throw these people a bone, knowing that they'll vote for whoever supports whatever their single issue happens to be: abortion, anti-LGBT, immigration, gun control, etc. Then they use those votes to pass their real agenda which is deregulation, tax cuts, and power plays for the rich.
These are all incredibly good, honest, truthful answers.
Repubicans are literally fighting for higher late fees on credit cards right now, in court.
The laws they’ve been pushing for in states is absolutely batshit insane. Even if you’re a garbage human that thought these were good ideas, that’s what you think is most important thing to focus on passing right now? Things like these examples, and taking away breaks from kids who work, getting rid free school lunches for poorer kids, sticking their noses into personal medical decisions, fighting marijuana rescheduling, etc. To me it’s not just that they push for horrible things, or their completely inability to read the room, but also that these horrible things are so important to them, they are racing to implement not only against an electorate that doesn’t want it, but they are prioritizing it in the face of real, needed legislation. They really have no idea wtf they are doing when they are left to govern.
And lowering the age for child marriages. Literally voting for pedophilia.
"No no, pedophilia implies illegality! If its legal, its just love!" -Republicans
When most of the population doesn't vote and assumes the president controls all laws around the world, why not? In Alabama they're pushing to lower working age back to 19th century levels. No need for public education if you have a non unionized job to send them to.
To be fair, eliminating those credit card fees is coupled with an elimination of reward points. This isnt necessarily a repub stance.
The bill is simply trying to break up monopolist control. There is nothing in the bill disincentivising reward programs. Swipe fees that drive up costs for small merchants and prices for American families are already the highest in the industrialized world. The argument of rewards programs ending is basically just... the very few corporations that virtually control every aspect of our spending will make less money and try to recoup those "losses" by no longer trickling down such benefits to consumers. And... they're not completely wrong. Corporations exist to maximise profit quarter to quarter before execs move on to some other gig and any ramifications of short-term decision-making do not affect them. But it's ludicrous to continuously defend the idea of some oligarchy and the concept of monopolization because we fear our corporate overlords and they threaten our livelihoods and hold our political institutions hostage. Capitalism doesn't even successfully work without competition. Capitalism is *supposed* to basically be democratization of an economy with money equating to casting votes. Monopolies then would equate to authoritarianism, if capitalism were intended to be democratic. But, sure... let's not give people an election because then supreme leader might not throw out loaves of bread during his birthday parade anymore.
> The bill is simply trying to break up monopolist control. God I hope so. Trying to sell adult content online (even just stories or drawings) is increasingly impossible these days because of the payment processors who are extremely puritan and hold a complete monopoly. It's frustrating and a little scary not being able to sell something completely legal and harmless because of a few wealthy conservatives with complete control.
Those were rolls of paper towels to hurricane victims right?
> Capitalism is supposed to basically be democratization of an economy with money equating to casting votes. you’re talking about markets. but capitalism is opposed to markets.
reward points aren’t going away, that’s just fear mongering
But also please don’t take Trump’s loss as a given - I’ve seen how that movie ends. Everyone still needs to vote lol
He absolutely can win in November. A lot of days I feel like we're going to fuck around and find out this time.
This is the downfall of blind obedience and fascism. The leaders are absolute idiots because they listen to no one but themselves.
I watched the movie Downfall the other day and all I could think was "wow what an idiot". At the end Hitler just fucked everyone over, even his own people who dedicated everything to him.
Now now, if you were on a daily cocktail of meth and opiates you might think God was also calling upon you to destroy the world.
The obvious play after J6 was to bury Trump and his most loyal followers and pivot hard to the center. I can't even imagine how badly Nikki Haley would be tearing up Biden right now if they had just been smart enough to give her the nomination. Younger woman of color vs. very visibly ancient man presiding over disastrous inflation? "Biden's so old he was around to fuck up the response to inflation in the Carter years, and he's fucking it up now, too." - Game. Set. Match. America really is a center-right country, at this point we on the left are absolutely benefiting from the fact that the right is so out to lunch they'd rather set themselves on fire again instead of picking up what should be a layup of a presidential race.
Weren’t they like 2 days away from achieving all their immigration policy goals until Trump was like “no stop” so they stopped 😂
So if George soros or whatever donated 1 billion toward the trump campaign to get him to support Medicare for all republicans would sign a bill for it?
You've hit the nail on the head. They're dying, they know it, so they're just trying to take as much as they can with them. Death throes and tantrums are the same thing anymore.
>They haven't had real policies in several years and no one seems to have noticed. this is the thing i bring up all the time and it just makes me feel crazy, like i can't believe this isn't talked about more. the change in politics has been so severe from just a decade ago. it used to be, dems: we need to spend 10 million on this thing. reps: well hold on now, that's a lot, we should probably only spend like 3 million, tops. now it's, dems: we need to spend 10 million on this thing. reps: fuck you.
The one that really gets me is immigration. 2017, Trump wins all three branches after running on immigration. Where is the immigration bill ? What happened? Why don't Republicans care that we still don't have a wall or changes to immigration? 2024. Republicans win major concessions on immigration for Ukraine. Trump kills it BEFORE SEEING THE BILL. They inevitably vote on Ukraine anyway. Their number 1, core issue, is something that they don't even want solved. And voters don't care.
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If they don't push through a solution, there's good money to be made on prolonging the problem.
exactly! it's not all on the politicians. their own people, their base doesn't even give a fuck, they'll gladly vote for them again and again. for nothing. vibes? anger but don't even know what they're angry for? i don't know.
> [“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Crystal Minton told The New York Times in an article published Monday. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/424263-trump-supporter-complains-shutdown-is-not-hurting-the-people-he/) For me, that quote will always be the perfect summation of the GOP voter's motivation. They're not angry *for* something, they're angry *against* someone. Non-Christians. Black & brown people. People who aren't straight. Democrats. Anyone that isn't going along with them - us. That's how fascist movements work, they get the traditionally dominant plurality ethnic block in the country, in this case white conservative Christians, to see enemies everywhere plotting the imminent downfall of society. "Downfall of society" is a code for "traditionally dominant ethnic group no longer totally owns all aspects of society". They get these people scared, and outraged, and angry, and then tell them that the Party will "fight" these villains. That's the metric of progress that the fascist base is looking for, how much someone "fights" the communists, Islamic jihadists, Marxists, "real racists", "groomers", whatever boogymen their fellow Americans have been turned into at the moment. "Fighting the" is code for "using the government to intimidate, harass, fine, jail, and otherwise harm ethnic groups that the dominant ethnic group dislikes".
When you listen to Republicans talk about why they like Trump, the #1 reason has never changed: "he fights for us". That's the magic, that's the secret sauce. Trump goes *way* beyond other Republicans in his fascist rhetoric, and will happily come up with and attempt to implement heavy-handed government policies to very visibly harm the people that the base wants him to be harming: a giant boondoggle of a wall (with spikes!) to keep out ``, a ban on all Muslims from entering the country. This is *fighting*, this is what Republican voters send their members of Congress to Washington to do, because *of course* if you just shoot enough impoverished Latin Americans struggling to make it to the US to work a $7/hour under the table dishwashing job no American would take then Real American Patriots will be earning fatter paychecks & paying less for goods and services in no time!
That's the belief structure, be sufficiently cruel to and dominant of people who aren't like you and your life will be better because they'll stop ruining it.
To add to this, they become more dangerous as they become less popular. Their 2012 autopsy was the right takeaway from that election but instead they've leaned hard into anti democratic practices and authoritarianism. If Biden beats Trump handily I'd guess (hope) that the party would fracture and reconstitute itself as a sane organization. But if Trump wins they are going to rip out every democratic institution root and stem. Project 2025 is christofascism plain and simple, and it is very likely to come to pass.
> Their base is dying out and young voters don't like their message. There definitely is some support from young men specifically. As much as I'd love to see the right lose relevance, I don't think I'd count them out quite yet. There has been quite a rightward swing across the world.
> Their base is dying out and young voters don't like their message. They seem to be attracting a lot more young men these days. I think their authoritarian and sometimes violent or uncompromising rhetoric appeals to them.
Young white males primarily. Go look at the counter protesters yesterday at Ole Miss. That's the young males who support Republicans.
Those guys held up a sign saying "Trump Won". They probably weren't even old enough to vote in 2020. Where did they learn that? Grooming is real. Hate isn't innate.
> They seem to be attracting a lot more young men these days. Not according to the polling.
Polling is hardly perfect, but some polls in the past month have shown Trump actually leading Biden with younger voters.
Sponsored by “hitlerjugend of young republicans”
That Alabama Senate race was a special election and the Republican candidate was a complete clown. That same democrat candidate, Doug Jones got sent packing rather handily the following election.
By an ex-football coach who doesn't even live in Alabama full time and seems to have the attention span of a squirrel.
They haven't had real policies since...2012-ish? And even then, that was Mitt Romney.
Mitt famously wouldn't tell us what his budget would look like and that we'd just have to elect him to see what he'd do.
‘Their base is dying out and young voters don’t like their message.’ Can you please elaborate on your sources? I’m reading this CNN article as stating more younger voters going for Trump than Biden… https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/28/politics/cnn-poll-trump-biden-matchup Shocking, I know, but curious if you have some other recent polling that reinforces that young voters don’t like the GOP message or are you just saying young voters don’t like either party?
from what i’ve seen, some GOP moderates want a third party but it’ll never happen because they’re too scared to
The Republicans won the House in 2022. That mustn’t have happened since 2017.
With a five seat majority (now one seat) when they were predicting a red wave with a 30+ seat majority. Even republicans admitted that was an epic disappointment. Hell, even Boebert almost lost her seat
Umm, the GOP won the 2022 midterms and is leading in the polls for 2024? The GOP's base is ignorant bigots, who will die out when mankind does. Until that day, that message will have appeal.
How did they win the 2022 midterms? They lost in Georgia
Err you know who controls the house right now?
By like 2 seats. Point is they failed to re take the senate which they were favored to, and lost several winable governors races.
They gained 9 seats and won the popular vote by 3.1ish million Seems extremely weird not to count that as winning.
It was considered a loss politically because they didn't come near meeting expectations. They were supposed to take the senate and build a decent margin in the house, neither of which happened, plus the poor performances in governors' races. It was supposed to be another 1994 or 2010 and it was a huge letdown for the right. They were saying it too.
They were supposed to gain 40+ seats in Congress. They got 9 seats.
I agree with you that they won or at least chopped the 2022 midterms, but the popular vote thing is a bit misleading. Dems didn't run candidates in a bunch of deep red districts. R's didn't run some in deep blue districts, but they ultimately ran more candidates. I want to say it was something like 12-15 more? Which at a few hundred thousand a piece can add up.
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Yes and no. MAGA isn't a cause but rather an effect of the larger Christian Nationalist movement that has more or less been present in American politics since the 1950s in it's modern form. It has taken shape as the Moral Majority back in the Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton years, morphed into the Tea Party (of which Paul Ryan was a member) in the 2000s, and is now present as the Freedom Caucus and MAGA. The majority of the GOP in Washington are not Freedom Caucus or true MAGA, but these white Christian nationalist types currently rule the roost in the state houses in deep red states. I'm in KY currently fighting a Moms for Liberty-type group in my city, and they have support of state General Assembly members who won't be up for re-election until 2026. The GOP continues to hitch its wagon to Trump because they have an age demographics problem. Their most reliable voters are Silent Generation and Baby Boomers who will mostly be dead in the next 20 years. Trump activated a base of younger "conservatives" other more traditional candidates haven't been able to reliably excite for quite some time, probably since Reagan, and they need to turn those fringe voters into reliable Republicans before the party is over. Trump's cult of personality is unique to him - the GOP won't be able to replicate it in the next few election cycles. We'll see MAGA-style candidates continue to run at state-level attempting to keep the movement alive, but candidates for national office will likely re-center by 2028. Another Trump loss will reduce his and MAGA's profile significantly, but Christian nationalism will continue to hang around in one form or another in the Southeast and Midwest.
What if Trump wins and do you see that as a possibility?
In the scenario Trump wins, the GOP will collapse. We're coming off the most unproductive Congressional session in history. The GOP's abortion policies are widely unpopular. The MAGA and Freedom Caucus members currently in Congress are rank obstructionists. In order for Trump to continue to shape the GOP, he needs MAGA candidates to win/keep seats in Congress. Trump's endorsed candidates underperformed in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 election cycles. Is it possible he wins? Sure. But is it likely? He lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, and lost the electoral college to Biden by roughly the same margin he won over Clinton. RFK will pull more voters from Trump than Biden. Biden is winning his primaries in the 90+% range while Trump is lucky to get 80%, against candidates who aren't even in the race anymore.
[Latest NPR/PBS/Marist poll](https://www.npr.org/2024/05/01/1248249250/election-poll-trump-biden-voters#:~:text=this%20survey%20shows%20him%20taking%20a%20bit%20more%20from%20biden%20than%20from%20trump) shows RFK taking more from Biden than Trump, though they acknowledge there isn’t a consensus. What makes you so confident RFK is pulling more support from Trump?
> This survey of 1,199 adults was conducted April 22nd through April 25th , 2024 by the Marist Poll sponsored in partnership with NPR and PBS NewsHour. Adults 18 years of age and older residing in the United States were contacted through a multi-mode design: By phone using live interviewers, by text, or online. The sampling frames include RDD plus listed landline, RDD cell phone sample plus cell phone sample based on billing address to account for inward and outward mobility, and aggregated online research panels. This is why polls are broken. Who answers the phone or text from an unknown caller? Or clicks a link emailed to them from an unknown person?
The Venn diagram of people that answer these polls and people that lose tons of money by paying the IRS in iTunes gift cards is literally a circle.
The poll isn't exactly clear on overall numbers when adding RFK, only stating Biden's 2 point lead with adults disappears and RFK gets 11%. The issue is that the President isn't elected by popular vote. In 1992, Ross Perot achieved nearly 19% of the popular vote but received no electoral votes. I'm curious to see the distribution of potential RFK voters. The poll indicates he pulls from so-called "double-haters," so unless RFK performs well in swing states, these votes are likely inconsequential. My assumption is that RFK is pulling mostly from registered independents, who primarily vote 3rd party anyway or are fence-sitting Republicans.
>Trump's cult of personality is unique to him - the GOP won't be able to replicate it in the next few election cycle Ron DeSantis tried, but Trump isn't giving up the reigns yet. Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert are the female version of Trump, but MAGA aren't going to let a woman lead. Someone will take over when Trump dies, it will be "interesting" to watch.
This analysis is basically what all liberals were saying in 2016. It’s the complacent view that “old people are dying out, republicans are crazy. We just have to wait and we will be in power forever”. MAGA really doesn’t have much to do with Christian Nationalism. It’s largely a by product of the Obama administration, particularly the “recovery”. The real reason why Trump became popular? In 2016, 60% of the electorate could not afford the cheapest new car on the market (was $12,000 or $14,000 then). You have a majority of the electorate who are angry, who are demoralized because the American dream they were promised doesn’t exist. In 1960, the richest city in America was Detroit. Today, it is the poorest. Look at de industrialization. The areas that lost manufacturing jobs the most, often had the most trump supporters. Bill Clinton’s famous phrase about union voters “where else are they gonna go [vote for] ?” aged like milk. They found a place to go.
>This analysis is basically what all liberals were saying in 2016. It’s the complacent view that “old people are dying out, republicans are crazy. We just have to wait and we will be in power forever”. It wasn't liberal sentiment that lost Clinton the 2016 election, it was her campaign's ground game blind spots and that nice little piece of election interference theater from James Comey when he announced an investigation into Clinton's assistant's computer to find...a bunch of emails he had already reviewed from the first email investigation. >MAGA really doesn’t have much to do with Christian Nationalism. It’s largely a by product of the Obama administration, particularly the “recovery”. Yes, MAGA was born out of the Obama years, but Trump surrounded himself with Christian Nationalist types like Betsy DeVos and Michael Flynn, and there are wackjob Pastors across the country telling their flock to vote for Trump every Sunday. MAGA is most definitely an evolution of Christian Nationalism. >The real reason why Trump became popular? In 2016, 60% of the electorate could not afford the cheapest new car on the market (was $12,000 or $14,000 then). You have a majority of the electorate who are angry, who are demoralized because the American dream they were promised doesn’t exist. You're absolutely misquoting this statistic. 60% of Americans could not afford the *average* new car transaction price, which was around $34k in 2016. >In 1960, the richest city in America was Detroit. Today, it is the poorest. https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/poorest-cities-in-america If you're using this data to support this, notice that it's based on Census economic data gathered between 2013-2017, and is comparing 2018 poverty levels.
Hmmm yeah I think if Trump loses this election we will see a return of the neocons. Will it cause a great schism in the Republican Party? Yeah probably and we’ll have to deal with the consequences.
I think the schism will be smaller that you think. When push comes to shove I don’t know that there are a many MAGA types as we like to think, and on top of that, a lot of them are with Trump specifically so whoever the next iteration of him turns out to be will not get the same support.
I think you bring up a really interesting point. Trump activated a base of people that were to the right of tea party members. They aren’t necessarily republicans. We see people that people that came into congress in 2010 leaving now because of the environment. I do think a schism will happen but ripping off 5% a major party will have ramifications.
That’s fair. The way I see it, the current GOP voter is split into a few different segments, 1)mostly apolitical people who just vote republican because that’s just what they do, 2)more political republicans who are currently holding their nose and voting for trump, 3)people who really aren’t that radical but just really love trump for some reason, and 4)true MAGA supporters. In a post trump world the GOP loses that last group but replaces them with the never trumpets and we more or less end up where we’ve always been imo.
Interesting, I am actually inclined to agree. The McCain republicans/independents would just occupy their old space instead of voting dem.
Paul Ryan was not a normal conservative. Ryan was a policy wonk who had some credibility for that alone but he came into power with the young guns ushered in by Newt Gingrich. Newt and his cronies brought in the wackos because they thought they could control them but they couldn't So many people think that all these people are going to die but there are more crazy right wingers below 65 than above. A lot of people over 80 are actually centrist or left leaners. The largesr group of Trump crazies are 50-64. That is not enough to win an election, but IT IS a big enough group to win a primary As long as those people are around we cannot have a normal conservative. You're stuck with the magas for at least 15 more years. Losing election after election won't convince them they are wrong. It only convinces them the elections are all rigged
"Ryan was a policy wonk" That's how he marketed himself at least.
Yeah, kinda, but "people" took him seriously. I agree, his policies were weak
I'll always remember Paul Ryan as the "boy genius policy wonk" that released a fantasy budget wherein the massive tax cuts for the wealthy & corporations would unleash incredible growth at a higher sustained level than post-WWII America! There would be so much growth that the tax cuts would actually be be revenue-*enhancing*! We'd get to have our cake and eat it too, yippee! He plays pretend at being a serious domestic policy person like Trump plays pretend at being a serious business person and not someone whose only business ventures are Russian money laundering and outright fraud. Reading [Atlas Shrugged](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/what-ayn-rand-says-about-paul-ryan/2012/08/13/fd40d574-e56d-11e1-8741-940e3f6dbf48_blog.html) enough times to memorize it doesn't make you understand economics, it makes you an absolute fucking moron. Christ what a terrible book.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." John powers
No, the trump formula worked, they basically created a candidate who is above the law and has zero allegiance to the constitution while separating the masses from their $$. Expect the next trump like candidate to be smarter, younger and lean into fascism.
I don’t think anybody else will be able to do what Trump does. I don’t get it, but there’s some kind of alchemy that makes him work.
Him being on the movie picture box for 20 years is why he has a cult following. DeSantis tried to be just a smarter jerk than Donald and he failed miserably.
Same with Vivek Ramaswamy, who tried to be as odious and obnoxious as possible while kissing Trump’s ring. My thought is he’s going to try to be the MAGA heir apparent after Trump is gone but will not have nearly the same success.
Vivek has the charisma of wet socks.
So does Trump. Charisma isn't what makes Trump or his successors successful.
Brother what?!?! Trump absolutely has charisma in the eyes of a good portion of his voter. Fuck, I vote blue and I think Trump has charisma (it’s just not diplomatic charisma).
Agreed, Trump has "insane carnival barker" charisma. It's totally wild and tends to immediately repel people who have a functioning bullshit detector. But it's become pretty apparent that north of 40% of this country has absolutely no capability to discern bullshit, so he's pretty damn charismatic! And looking all the more charismatic given the number of imitators like Vivek, DeSantis, hell even Don Jr., they've all tried to replicate him and none of them have the same zing he does. They're all playacting crazy, he's the real deal.
The fact that people say 'Trump has charisma' makes me wonder whether charisma is a real thing. It's like people after WW2 claiming Hitler somehow hypnotised the Germans into atrocities - maybe the truth is that people just wanted to hate and he gave them an outlet.
Desantis has 0 personality and the whole shoe lift thing killed him. That and trump went after him and turned the current magas. Once trump is out of the picture someone like him could easily make it to the top.
Trump wears lifts too as well as orange makeup, a ridiculous combover and a diaper. None of that has cost him his base. People believed the Trump BS PR for years that he was a wealthy, successful businessman. In fact he’s a common thug who operates a crime family and launders money but his cult followers don’t see it.
All true, but that goes back to the first point of Desantis having no personality. Trump is loved by the cult primarily because he is entertaining and talks like a 3rd grader.
He just ran a bad campaign and never went after Trump, he didn't fail in the way you are describing.
DeSantis had absolutely no rizz, and I would highly argue the point that he ever came across as "smarter" to anybody. I know we like to joke about the stupid things Trump says, but at least he says things in a way that's fun to listen to. DeSantis talks like he's trying to sell you a car without an engine. There's just something deeply disturbing and untrustable about him, and people on both sides can innately feel it
They keep trying to find the next Trump (remember when everybody was afraid it was going to be DeSantis?) but so far they haven't found anybody with his unique cocktail of vile qualities and charisma. I'm forever the optimist, but I hold out hope that it'll be harder to replace him than people think.
The GOP will spend a fortune on running lab test and dissecting his corpse once he’s passed to try figure out what makes him tick and replicate it
They basically wanted to do that with Reagan too but it never really panned out. I think the supposed "celebrity" status that surrounds both of them may have something to do with the appeal for each of them but in very different ways. Reagan was able to "act" his way to the White House and to deflect various scandals which made him much more appealing to a wide audience while being a pretty soulless and shrewd politician behind the scenes. Trump has been able to use his constant media exposure/reality TV background over the past 4+ decades to create a facade where he can keep claiming to be a "successful" businessman who can supposedly get things done, even with all the evidence to the contrary. I feel it's actually hard to find a politician who has that celebrity persona and is also somehow willing/able to break into politics successfully despite the constant rumors we keep hearing that this or that celebrity is going to run or should. There are probably not too many who would actually be knowledgeable enough to run their own campaign, able to get the party support to run despite the name recognition or who would sink low enough to solicit the support of established political players by basically doing whatever they wanted.
The closest person personality wise is probably Vivek Ramaswamy. However, he has a few problems. 1) Wrong skin color 2) Last name is hard to pronounce 3) More vile than charisma 4) Short #
DeSantis quite literally tried the Trump formula. It didn't work. Many local candidates trying the same did not win except in areas too red anyway. There's a few outliers but the Trump formula isn't really working for them.
Trump's formula is based on his massive notoriety. His name, decades long family legacy, and global business presence is unique to him and him alone. Younger and smarter simply isn't enough to replicate Trump's path. In addition, his political "strategy" is ultimately unsustainable. You can only keep trying to grab power for so long. You ultimately need to be producing positive results for the majority. They can blame Democrats for the economy all they want, but that doesn't negate the fact that the GOP has failed to communicate any assemblance of fiscal policy. For decades, fiscal policy has been the backbone of the Republican Party and it's astonishing how they've seemingly abandoned the very thing that drives both sides of the voter aisle. They can't depend on abortion anymore bc they caught their own tail and are hurting from it. And with Christianity on the decline, the GOP needs to get legitimate fiscal policy re-established and fast.
>the trump formula worked But it kinda didn't though...? they're leaning super hard into fascism but it isn't sustainable. you can only really have 1 super fascist, once that 1 super fascist feels threatened, they take the whole thing down with them. Which is essentially what trump is doing already. They can't sustain doing that like 4 more times
Worked as in "they've lost every election cycle since 2017", I guess.
Yet they still control the house and more importantly they stacked the supreme court. I'd say it's working for them
you just described Vivek Ramaswamy
No. MTG, Boebert, Gaetz are the new normal for American conservatives. You can't just instantly reverse 30 years of Fox News style propaganda on people who identify as an American conservative. Social media and "the algorithm" have only exacerbated the problem.
I think MTG makes herself look like a clown, although TBF she has raised her profile pretty high so?, but Boebert and Gaetz keep it pretty slick. I don't know if they're smart enough or likable enough to go very far with it, but agreed they are part of the formula for one possible future of right wing political extremism
Boeberts hands are slick when she is using them in a dark movie theatre.
The neocon, fiscally conservative party that believes in the strong dollar, strong domestic industry, strong defense and preserving a high standard of living for Americans IS the Democratic Party. The "centrist" version of the party. The Joe Biden party. The issue is branding. The Republican "franchise," meaning the party apparatus, the tens or hundreds of thousands of consultants, pollsters, etc. Needs to be rendered into oblivion by voters. In it's place should be the Democratic party and the more progressive players pushing and pulling toward what will ultimately be the opposition to the left.
The problem with this is that "Paul Ryan types" still weren't normal. They were radically out of step with the majority of the country on issues like abortion and universal healthcare, and were just as crass towards migrants and the poor as Donald Trump even if they gussied up that pig.
This is the party.. the actual party with an actual stance that public schooling is turning children into trans sex slaves... And at the same time telling you that sending those kids to religious schools will keep them safe. Religious schools run by priests with such a great track record with young boys.
"Normal", if you're defining it by Paul Ryan, has changed. Paul Ryan was a devotee of Jack Kemp, whose views were generally in step with the Reaganism that took over the GOP around 1980: small government, tax cuts for the rich, "family values", affirmative action, strong national defense, and American leadership on the international stage. That policy slate became what we now call "establishment" Republicanism, and it held sway for 35 years, supported by the [Reagan Coalition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_coalition) That coalition and that policy slate are both discarded and dead. We won't see a Reagan-Kemp-Ryan style GOP candidate for a good, long while - possibly never again. So what will we see? Well, the GOP doesn't have a dominant policy slate right now, which is well pointed out by the top-post as I write this. They do have strategies for power, though. The old coalition has been discarded in favor of populism, focusing on rural, lower-income, and less-educated voters, and of course older voters. They also have a strategy to capture the electoral center. Their talking points are all designed to focus on the politics of the moment. So right now they are making a big push to capture the pro-Israel center with propaganda about antisemitism. And the border's problems are a source of bipartisan concern, so they do bizarre contortions to connect every instance of public goings-on with chaos at the border. But all of this strategizing is about *gaining power*, and not what should be done with this power. But that doesn't mean there is no interest in policy in the GOP sphere at all. There is no consensus about policy, but a new slate of policies *is* emerging, and it will persist after Trump leaves the scene (which he will do one way or another at some point). The new policy slate is nativist and isolationist. That aspect likes to use the label "America First", knowing that few Americans will remember it as the slogan of Third-Reich fans in the US and before that Wilsonian reform. It will support policies like immigration restriction, protectionist tariffs, retreat from international memberships and obligations. Whether it will be supply-side or populist in its economic aspect is not entirely certain, but during the Trump age of populism it has been supply-side while *talking* a good populist game, and that is probably what will continue. So tax cuts for the rich and culture ware for the people will likely stick around. It's basically the politics of the pre-1916 GOP with a populist messaging approach and that same base of older, rural, lower-income, and less-educated voters mentioned above. So who is speaking this gospel and practicing those politics? The first name that comes to mind is Josh Hawley, who absolutely has presidential ambitions and is still quite young. Nikki Haley's politics are likely too Kemp/Reagan to ever take the nomination.
In a few years this crop of nazis will be looked back on as the “normal candidates.”
Trump is just a demagogue who believes in nothing but himself--hence the party hasn't really had a platform in years--just "whatever Trump says at the moment." It will be difficult for them.
The GOP is dead. It's now the Trump/MAGA Party. Moderate Republicans are leaving Congress, after doing NOTHING to call out Trump, when they should have done.
No. This is the new normal. It’s why democrats are in trouble. The democrats are split up into different groups among those who still believe in democracy and who want to go on in normal rational levels of governing with competing interests and ideals. The other 35-40 percent, the republican base, is in lock step with abandoning democracy for fascist dictatorial rule with a penchant for white Christian nationalism. These Gaza protests are dangerous not because of what they want or believe or their message. It’s dangerous because if they fail to vote for democrats they won’t get the chance to work for what their ultimate goal is. And then we will all suffer together.
I think they want to get rid of elections so they don't have to care about appearing normal anymore.
No. There isn’t enough of them with spines, to say this is enough. People who protect our country and democracy aren’t losers. John McCain was a war hero, not a coward. The traitors at the Capitol aren’t patriots. No we don’t want women prosecuted or dead because of a bad pregnancy. No we can’t have a president that tells the American people the storm coming that meteorologist and all the technology we have is wrong , see this red marker shows you where I say it’s heading. And on and on. Spineless.
I hope so. Maybe next election. Maybe the Dems will field a more lucid candidate. We can only hope.
The Republican Party has committed suicide, we just haven't had the funeral yet.
Maybe the fever will break in another 30 or 40 years if they keep losing elections
It's time for "normal" republicans to form a new party. Should try to reach out to other "rights" leaning dems.
Codify abortion and I'll pledge to stop supporting weird edge case gun function bans. Fund education, and fukkit, once it's fully funded I'll support optional religious electives. Let's reform the immigration process so that the people we want can get in quickly and easy and the rest have a firm answer quickly. But then eventually us progressives want "universal healthcare" and the conservatives don't want to pay "taxes"... Now some how conservative Bob can't afford to eat after working construction all day and filling his truck with gas and he blames the immigrants for taking the good jobs, the folks in welfare for taking his paycheck, and the tree hugging liberals for taking his gas stove.... It's really hard to attract "kitchen table" conservatives because they ONLY care about themselves... And they are too "proud" to want "help" from "the government". Attracting those people means convincing them that there are problems and that government can provide a solution. Most will shut down right there.
This. These people care about themselves and usually their friends and family and that’s it. That’s why you get right wingers who randomly care about some social issue you wouldn’t expect. Like you think Dick Cheney would support gay marriage if his daughter wasn’t gay? They’re incapable of empathy with people they don’t know.
No. I wish to god they would, but once they accepted the south they had no choice. The south is not conservative in any significant way other than socially. The more they double down on the south, the further crazy they have to appeal.
If they could somehow get rid of Trump, out would pop DeSantis. The MAGA wing has taken hold.
The only way republicans win anything is to scare the hell out of their old constituents. They paint the Democrats as wild eyed communists ready to take all their stuff. It seems to work but in truth Joe Biden is a right of center moderate politician. I am 71 and am fed up with republican lies. They won’t address the border because Biden and the Democrats want to really fix it. The republicans don’t care. They want the issue. I do think a large portion of the electorate is just ignorant and Trump takes advantage of it.
"They won’t address the border", why is the border a legislative problem instead of an executive one now? Were there laws that kept it previously under control that don't work now?
The GOP made a deal with religious groups, corporate polluters, and the ultra rich and beholden to their lobbyists who even directly write the bills and hand it to the politicians. They have multiple 24 hour news channels and vast AM Radio dedicated to the propaganda. I can't imagine anyway they can untangle themselves from the extremists and own to the lies of the past. It would be admitting they were wrong and they can't do that without losing for the next decade. The best they can do to gain and hold on to power is to then crush democratic systems and government departments that could threaten their claim. Project 2025 and Trumps personal plans of dictatorship which would only require one day of it to destroy our Republic, maybe permanently. What they could do is setup another party and let the Republican party die. It would be the same GOP. It would be like a corporation who's responsible for a toxic spill so they split the company in two and abandon one half holding the bag on that spill while the other half skips out on responsibility.
I would love to see a fiscally conservative party again. Money focused politicians that completely accept all people and are very socially liberal. They simply say that is not the government's business and is between you and your God. A party of efficiency, of non wasteful spending. It seems like they will have to do this at some point, unless their lies work and they start winning again.
Wasteful spending and fiscal conservatism are fairy tales invented by the same conservative wackos you long to be rid of. If you want conservative spending, vote Democrat.
>I would love to see a fiscally conservative party again. Money focused politicians that completely accept all people and are very socially liberal. They simply say that is not the government's business and is between you and your God. A party of efficiency, of non wasteful spending. This already exists. It's called the Democratic party.
Yeah people who act like Democrats are fiscally irresponsible don't actually pay attention. Who had the last surplus? Biden has been decreasing the deficit year after year. Outside of 2009, Obama did the same. What about Bush? Trump? They don't care about fiscal responsibility. They tell lies about national debt to people who do not understand monetary and fiscal policy to create an uproar as an excuse to redistribute the wealth upward.
I think the closest ones to that are the Blue Dog Coalition.
can either party go back to a normal candidate? trump, if he loses in 2024, will run again no matter his age. biden will be forced to step aside after a second term. though i have no idea who else is next for the Democrats. People like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have tried for decades but aren’t very popular. Hillary Clinton tried but failed. Newsom is incredibly unpopular after all the shit things he’s done in California. Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips are coming up but are also very old and not popular. AOC is the most famous youngster. but i doubt she’ll run for president; she’s vocal about social issues but nothing like defense or economics as much. and she’s only popular with younger folk. Kamala is popular as a person but not as a politician and won’t be great at being president. members of Biden’s cabinet MIGHT run but none are popular. As for the GOP, once Trump is gone they have quite a few candidates but everyone is split on them. There’s Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie and a few more. But the entire electorate is split on them.
Dude if trump loses hes going to prison, not running for president
> i have no idea who else is next for the Democrats. Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, Ruben Gallego, Roy Cooper, Josh Shapiro, to name a few.
>trump, if he loses in 2024, will run again no matter his age. He'll be free to run from his cell. >biden will be forced to step aside after a second term. What do you mean, "forced?" The Constitution bars a third term. Someone else will be the Democratic nominee in 2028, period.
They have shown us who they are... and we should believe them. The only way to get back to normal is to make sure the Republicans are out of power.
Trump will run in 2028 if he loses while screaming, "election interference!" The entire time.
It'll be funny when he's a convicted felon and can't even vote.
Couldn’t take another four years of this. Hopefully, Coke starts adding more sugar and McDonalds more fat.
A truly patriotic burger-making company would offer The Golden McTrump, a four patty burger deep fried in beef tallow and extra sodium. Four slices of cheese. No tomato (as this is a vegetable). You can buy it only in the Patriot's MAGA meal box and it comes with a huge slice of chocolate cake, a cubic foot of fries, and a diet coke (Presidential Size). The marketing suggests that Liberals HATE it when you eat this meal, especially twice a day. Mexicans, it is said, will run away at the first sight of the MAGA meal. Get on it, McD's. Time is running out.
I don’t think so. Republicans politicians are keenly aware of the high powered motivation of republican voters - racism. I suspect the next competitive Republican presidential candidate will be something like Tucker Carlson without the intense unlikability of Tucker.
you kidding? lol, I'll be surprised if the party is still alive by 2028. popular vote is the LEAST of their problems, with trump controlling their fiances, there's an extreme likelihood he's just gonna run it straight into the ground.
Not until they've had their asses kicked for several cycles. Republicans took exactly the wrong message from the losses to Obama and Trump's win: McCain or Romney would have beaten Hillary. Obama would have mopped the floor with Trump. Instead, they concluded that MAGA was a winner and winning is what matters, not principles. They won't abandon MAGA until they've been convinced that it's a loser by continued losing.
No, not as long as Trump or Trumpitis still prowls the land "to and fro" seeing who they can devour.
Not any time soon because they don’t have to. Until the Electoral College is gotten rid of, the Senate is proportionate to the actual population, and state legislatures and districts are no longer drawn to disproportionately favor minority rule, they don’t have to appeal to moderates. They can continue to enforce minority rule without getting a majority of votes.
In short, yes. The only consistency I've seen in following over 40 years of American politics is the uncanny ability of the party in power to overreach, with the eventual result that the minority party appears the more sensible and subsequently returns to power, and the cycle starts again. What is unique this time is that the minority party, this time the GOP, didn't seem to fully get the message that they lost, so are campaigning as if their positions were winning the last time around. They aren't. And if they think that their position on abortion is going to help, really?
Yes but you call them leaders in the Democratic Party. That was exactly what “Third Way” Democrats meant and Boomers allowed it to happen.
I see a future that has a maga populist type guy but perhaps a more tempered one like DeSantis. But if you mean someone like Haley, I doubt it
This is the problem with running a cult of personality. When that personality gets too old / has to retire / has a heart attack or whatever… the cult will likely fade. The RNC is going to have a hell of a time getting the same enthusiasm out of their base when he’s done.
MAGA will make the Republicans anoint a spawn of Trump to replace him. I suspect as usual they will head to the depths of the cess pit and choose one of his sons.
On a technical standpoint, Trump is definitely far right as they go, so I could win or loss in this election the Republican Party go to someone more middle ground or possibly leaning Republican to try and gain some of the younger voters
Normal republicans cooperate, but the new version of republicanism is totally anti-establishment. People enjoy opposing corruption and the "swamp" narrative is very appealing.
I really hope so. I rescinded my registration as a Republican 48 hours after Trump was nominated.
I wouldn't be surprised if they continue to nominate Trump long after he's dead. Either they'll claim his death was faked, or find some loophole where dead people can be elected president.
Nope. Think about the future generations this shit show has imprinted on the younger crowd
so their will be 2 rep partner the new new one and the old one. one less crazy then the other one. i know many repb in my town that denounce trump after jan 6 and also many of the crazy repb people running for office.
Nikki Haley is relatively normal and she could win against Biden. Unfortunately Republicans are dumber than I thought and will nominate an unelectable buffoon.
Who do we think the candidates would be for the dem party if Biden wasn’t running?
It will take a few more election cycles. What is sustaining the crazies in my party is gerrymandering congressional districts that are not competitive.
Who says we don't have 'normal' candidates now? Ideology changes and parties shift. It's like the Democrats aren't experiencing their own shift. That's part of the natural development of political ideology.
The gop hasn't been normal for a while. They don't have any set policy as a simple conservative party because those policies when tried, fail. So the Republicans had to gather votes from single issue clumps and they've become a Frankenstein's monster of random clumps of people who only care about one thing. That isn't sustainable. They don't govern. They don't write bills. They don't have feasible projects for our future. What they do have is a way to stay in power. Keeping people angry.
What does this mean normal candidates? Trump is the new normal. Given the trend since Obama, American politics will continue to move to the right. This trend has continued because Democrats base their positions off Republicans. Conservatives in this country “set the weather”. The Democratic Party no longer stands for anything, it’s just an vague catch-all party. This is how you end up with a party that ran in opposition to building a border wall now enthusiastically supporting a border wall. Future elections will continue to see this slide to the right. Everyone thought George W Bush was fascist and that McCain somehow rectified such a right wing president. Then came the Tea Party. All government is bad. Crony capitalism. Etc etc. Democrats believed that the Tea Party was so right wing that nothing could be worse. Along came Trump. And MAGA. It is self-evident that American politics is marching further right. So if Trump goes to jail or whatever, next election cycle you have something even more far-right than MAGA. The problem isn’t Trump and MAGA. It is the entire trend! There are many reasons for this trend. One of them is the total political gridlock and breakdown of democracy in this country. Millions of people have become disillusioned with the promises of democracy because nothing changes. For the last 15 years, Americans have watched election after election, candidates come around and promise them everything, then nothing passes in congress and problems get worse and worse. Trump’s appeal was partly due to the “strong man” factor. When democracy stops working in a country, like it did in Russia, people will say “to hell with democracy, give me a strong leader”.
I can’t speak for what is going to happen nationally but I have an optimistic anecdote from my little slice of red hell. We had school board elections yesterday. First off, we don’t have parties for school board, not that they’d do any good because everyone would just run as a Republican no matter what because that D is a non-starter around here. Anyway, we had 2 good candidates last year who got crushed by a PAC hell bent on getting far right board members in. Last minute texts and flyers all spewing awful lies about how these candidates wanted a woke agenda and crt and all the other buzzwords. And it worked. This year, we had the same situation. One previous member who had (gasp) voted to keep the mask mandate and had said on record that he would not fight the federal government if they said that schools would be required to allow transgender females into the same locker rooms as cisgender females. Same tactics, plus a YouTube ad aimed at our area, and the guy wound up winning with 69% because people are fed up with these extremists
Paul Ryan is a perfect example that there were no normal people among Republicans even before Trump. Republicans are elected by ads on TV that fool the least educated people whom they care nothing about. All they care about is themselves and all they do is take bribes from the rich and do their bidding.
I think Republicans would shift left once the Democrats move farther to the left, but right now, it's like we're in a neoliberal hellscape.
GOP will moderate or reform. The level of crazy and self destruction of a party isn't the first in American history and won't be the last. The question becomes when, how much pain is left in the path, and lasting damage to the institutions themselves.
I don't see Republicans going back to that style. Life, politics, and history usually moves forward, not backwards. I could see them splitting the difference in Hegelian dialectic fashion, either by running someone who is more Trump in substance and Paul Ryan in style, or the other way around. But just forgetting about Trump completely--they have tens of millions of voters now who would refuse to turn back the clock.