The former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney “hopes to be able to rebuild” the Republican party after Donald Trump leaves the political stage. Mitt Romney, the retiring Utah senator and former presidential nominee, reportedly hopes so too.
Among other prominent Republicans who refuse to bow the knee, the former Maryland governor Larry Hogan is running for a US Senate seat in a party led by Trump but insists he can be part of a post-Trump GOP.
Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee chair turned MSNBC host, advocated more dramatic action: “We have to blow this crazy-ass party up and have it regain its senses, or something else will be born out of it. There are only two options here. Hogan will be a key player in whatever happens. Liz Cheney, [former congressmen] Adam Kinzinger and Joe Walsh – all of us who have been pushed aside and fortunately were not infected with Maga, we will have something to say about what happens on 6 November.”
If Trump loses, I don’t know that there will be a Republican party. The top people all hate each other and the only thing that unites them is brown-nosing Trump. They will tear the party apart all trying to replace him.
Which will be the optimal outcome
Unless they take the country with them
That only happens if he wins.
Or if their next attempt at murderous insurrection succeeds.
Yes. Yes, we will have to do something about that should that occur.
Don’t do that. Don’t give me hope.
I’m trying really hard to not be a pessimist right now for what I think are obvious reasons. It’s not easy.
Realistically, I’m jazzed to learn that my post-2024-election predictions from 2015 are already coming true… we might actually get the good future where the Democrats are the right-wing bad guys.
I have to think there’s something going on behind the scenes to organize a schism in the GOP, no matter what happens in this election. I think it’s unlikely that Liz Cheney and people like her will be able to wrest control of the current Republican party away from the fart sniffers, so they’re going to have to split and make a new party.
The outstanding question is “Why haven’t they done this already?” Maybe there’s just not enough solid support to pull it off ahead of the election, surely because there are a lot of people who are sniffing the farts out of fear, and they don’t want to burn that bridge yet.
Pay real close attention after this election. Lindsey Graham is going to show his other face again, and a whole bunch of other politicians will, too. Yes, there needs to be a path to redemption, but that path is going to have to include resignation for the likes of Graham, Vance, McConnell, anyone who supported Trump, then very much didn’t, and then supported him again. Such people cannot be entrusted with elected office.
so they’re going to have to split and make a new party.
They know if they split off, they will lose the party forever. Voters will never switch, they need the Republican brand. This isn’t about 4 years later, this is about long term.
Trump brings out the crazies to the primaries like no one else. This is why the old school just keeps their head down, they’re just waiting for Trump to bow out and hopefully the crazies eventually stop showing up to the primary.
Nah, not enough money. The donor class is firmly behind trump and his endless tax cuts for the rich.
Yeah, that’s definitely a possible scenario. I’m just undecided if I should fear that inevitable power vacuum or just grab some popcorn.
Popcorn initially, because it’s an election loser in the short-term. Long-term, they just need to find another Trump.
The Democratic party will become the new right wing party. The question is whether the Republican party will survive in a new hyper fascist mode, or a real left wing party will pick up the pieces.
My hope is for the latter, but realistically it’ll be the former.
The entire Republican base will just vote red all the way down no matter who is in the ballot so I don’t think there is a scenario where the Republican Party ever dissolves. They could run a monkey for state senate in red districts and it would win office.
If Jesus ran as a Democrat and Satan as a Republican, current day Republicans would wonder why god wanted Satan in the white house
Wonder? You give a lot of credit.
Nah, they’d call Jesus communist and vote for their lord and savior Satan.
Fox would have them saying “Satan was unfairly slandered.” They turned viewers around on Russia, they can do anything.
They’d probably execute him
“The Lord is using him as a vessel to do his good works.”
I’m saying the Republican party itself will fracture into more than one party. I just don’t see them uniting without a cult of personality at this point.
I used to see it that way but now? I doubt it will be that simple. So what if Trump is gone and no other republican leader can fit his shoes? Do they even have to?
Maybe it can be even more beneficial for the republicans to have a dead Trump. They can finally have complete control over his thoughts, his brand, image, his idealogy. With ai technology they can insert a nostalgic idealized version of Trump that he never was. More charismatic, more cohesive, malleable, and eternal. A figure like Jesus, like Mlk, like founding fathers. Who cares the real trump is dead? You can do anything with a base that is so hopelessly lost.
Somehow no other Repub is that shameless or that willing to behave like a schoolyard bully. The secret sauce is a guy who will say bigoted dictator shit out loud while doing an endless and uninterrupted parade of scandals.
I don’t know why they are unable to reproduce it since the party is full of shamelessly corrupt bigots who should in theory be willing to try. I guess looking like a complete dipshit hurts their pride, whereas Donald is an actual dipshit so it comes naturally.
The Republican party won’t go anywhere as long as we have a two party system.
We don’t have to have a two-party system. There’s no law requiring the Republican party to stay together. It’s just in their best interest to do so. I don’t know that they’ll care about what’s in their best interest after Trump. They’ll be too busy tearing each other apart, something they’ve wanted to do since 2015.
The two party system is an inevitable consequence of the FPTP election system. Replace that, and you can have multiple parties. Otherwise, you might get a short period of chaos with multiple parties which then settles down to the two winners.
Ironically, I could see that being the catalyst for ranked choice voting.
If you get a sane voting system out of all this then it just might have all been worth it. But it’s not how I would have gone about getting there…
I’m sure there will be some fun “huh, odd, all the votes for X went to Y” if it happens.
You say that but how do you unite extremist and moderate views? You don’t, it’s unsustainable. So no the party won’t fail to exist but if it fractures enough, it will take time to reform. A pretty long time.
They unite under their dislike of the other side and/or their supposed policies.
As long as there is a large concentration of a anti-education, anti-intellectual, and nationalistic brained people in easily gerrymandered areas there will probably always be a conservative party. The GOP has been playing their hateful scared brains like a fiddle for a good four plus decades, and they won’t go quietly into the night.
Maybe if we didn’t have a poorly planned two party system they’d have far less actual power.
I’m saying there will (potentially) be two conservative parties.
I could see your scenario being scary if the “reasonable” GOP members and funders split off and started sucking all the “conservative” liberal groups that normally vote Democratic but could be swayed to embrace even more neo-liberal policies.
you have to admit, it has been satisfying to watch them eat each other
Stop. Don’t do that. Don’t give me hope.
I would be a bad Star Trek moderator if I didn’t quote Jean-Luc Picard:
There will be a time when you will need to remember that no matter how bleak or unwinnable a situation, as long as you and your crew remain steadfast in your dedication, one to another, you are never ever without hope.
It really won’t be hard. Both sides (the trumpet and the old school) know they need the Republican brand to win. They’ll have a primary and then they’ll do what they do best: fall in line.
Maybe y’all shouldn’t have made it so hard for third parties to run.
I wouldn’t mind a new socialist party in the u.s politics.
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It’d be great if any of them had a proper ground game for local elections instead of just popping up every 4 years and only hyping a presidential candidate. They look too disorganized to take seriously.
It’s more fundamental than that. First-past-the-post voting systems inevitably turn into two-party rule. It’s built into the foundations of how the American government is voted for.
You see the same two-party rule in Canada even tho we have other viable, well-established parties.
Fptp is the problem, but neither of our (or your) major parties want to change the rules because it works for their benefit 50% of the time.
Im actually on the opinion that FPTP is not the main problem, it’s flawed but the actual problem is the amount of power the president has, you could still have FPTP in a parliamentary system that allows for smaller parties to have power in alliances and stuff like that.
For federal level, I can agree that the lack of ranked-choice hurts third party chances. Voters see too much risk in not voting for a major party.
That being said, well-coordinated local and state-level can definitely get a higher rate of success and show that there’s more to those parties besides political posturing. I’ve seen more campaigning for a primary for my local sheriff’s office this year than I had ever seen for any third party candidate ever at a local level. If the third parties focused on the down ballot, they would have more opportunity to show that they can put forward competent candidates to build trust for higher elected positions.
Most of them are too busy grifting. They’re stirring up local funding collecting all the people they can and then getting a bigger payday when the 4-year elections roll around.
You should watch the video I linked, it’s only 6 minutes long. The problem is that if you did manage to get more success for a third-party candidate that would be a bad thing. It would mean that the resulting government will be less likely to reflect your positions and ideals than it would if there had been no third-party candidate you supported.
In a first-past-the-post voting system trying to figure out how to make third-party candidates viable is a self-defeating goal. Unless you’re focusing on trying to make third-party candidates who appeal to your opponent’s voting group more viable, that is. Which is why you keep seeing sneaky donations from right-wing PACs to the Green party and such. The Republicans would love to see the Green party become a more prominent and viable option for left-leaning voters. And likewise, a lot of Democrats are cheering for RFK Jr. to be on the ballot because he draws more support from the right than from the left.
There are vast political differences between elected officials within each of the two main parties. That’s how the nation compensates for the two party system. Change a party from within -it’s absolutely possible and has been done before- instead of pissing and moaning that your little boutique clique “party” isn’t popular.
Reagan talked about ‘the big tent’ and did everything he could to purge anyone Left of him.
The GOP was ready for Trump for decades. George W. was just Donnie with a better staff around him.
Trump happened because large segments of US voters feel disenfranchised and resentful, as they feel they have been left behind and that their lives have been made worse by the policies of the political establishment and experts. If said political establishment and the experts want to end the Trump movement and prevent something similar from happening again, they’re going to have to address the concerns of dissatisfied voters. I don’t really think either party knows how to go about doing that.
I think part of the reason for that is there’s still significant discussion about what has caused so many Americans to become so unhappy with leadership, and you can’t really come up with a solution until you correctly identify the problem. I still don’t think the experts have a very good grasp on why Americans are upset. Until they figure it out, they can’t come up with a solution, and until they come up with a solution, movements like Trumpism are still very possible.
It’s really not hard to identify why, but billionaires will spend their life savings convincing people that late stage capitalism and oligarchy work.
Trump is happening because far right republicans realized after Watergate that if they wanted to get away with crimes in the future, that they needed to have news that presents “alternate” facts that are favorable to their narrative or that would at the least muddy the waters. Roger Ailes his plan worked basically.
Without censoring his appearances, Trump comes across as petulant/weak/selfish/stupid/hateful/… Without censoring his history, republican voters would have known that he was a serial scam artist, serial adulterer, … Basically without that alternate fact media supporting rightwing skullduggery, there would never have been a president Trump.
Imo it’s nonsense to claim that Trump getting elected, is happening because voters are angry because of mysterious reasons that no one can figure out, when those voters are so misinformed that they consistently vote against their own interests and believe stupid conspiracy theories that are being pushed to rile them up against the “other”. As long as that many people live in an alternate reality based on lies and hate, there is no helping them. So the challenge becomes: how do you bring them out of it and how do you prevent it from happening again in the future.
it’s nonsense to claim that Trump getting elected, is happening because voters are angry because of mysterious reasons that no one can figure out…
That’s not exactly what I am saying. It’s more that there isn’t yet a consensus of what the root problem is. There are a lot of theories, sure, like yours. That’s one theory, but, confident though you may be that that is the exact problem, not everyone agrees, or at least they think there’s more to it than that.
I think there might be some truth to your theory, but I don’t agree with the idea that these people are essentially doing fine, but they’ve been brainwashed into thinking they’re not doing fine. That it’s all just a result of some kind of mass hypnosis. That kind of erases the very real problems that many of these people do face.
One thing we can all agree on is that the problem that upsets voters has nothing to do with lack of healthcare, inability to purchase a first home, lack of a decent social safety net nor anything to do with inflation, money in politics or dark money corporate pak donations
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At what point will voting for that new left party become optimal?
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always has been
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when they reach 33%
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when Republicans reach 25%
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when Republicans are literally gone
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other
If you plan to wait until you can vote for them in a national election then you’re missing the point.
The democracy you’re looking for is built from the bottom up, starting with your coworkers.
The first vote you should be concerned with is a card check election to unionize your workplace.
In that case, same question, but for a small local race.
Same answer, smaller scale.
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