i think this is the key. what’s changed about the party isn’t trump. if their nominee wasn’t trump, they would eventually have hit on someone as equally bad - a tom cotton or whomever.
what’s actually changed about the party is the context of the country.
i don’t think they were prepared to be losing so many white people frankly. now they have lost some at least - that plus the changing demographics - means the only way to keep holding on to power is by force, and the unequal application of law.
I have been expecting this since the 1990s. The GOP has demonstrated that it seeks to seize and hold power at all costs. It has no tenets or priorities beyond this – its ends justify its means. Everything it says and everything it does is directed at gaining and maintaining power, with no concern about facts, consistency, traditions, ethics, laws, or the well-being of its constituents.
The GOP was always going to find a leader like Mass-Murdering Traitor Trump – lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, fomenting insurrection for power. Even the Republicans who hate Trump admit that they dislike his style rather than his substance; they think his transparent criminal behavior gives away too much of the game too soon.
You preserve democracy by practicing it. This is the time to double down on civic engagement on the local level. The GOP needs to be denied every position from school boards on up.\
It would be nice if his leaving the field (hopefully because he’s locked up and wearing an ill fitting orange jumpsuit), results in the balkanizing into a dozen or so less powerful contingents.
I know many so-called Christians that think they are right and justified no matter what. They are largely “Republican” with some self-proclaiming “Independent”. They care nothing for separation of Church and State and they DO NOT CARE ABOUT MAJORITY RULE. There is nothing you can do w/ these people…rationally and civilly speaking.
All of these things should definitely come to pass, but if they do, they will only serve to elevate Trump among his worshippers. And his worshippers are the only people around who would still want to vote Republican, so Trumpism is here to stay until demographic changes make the party unelectable even in traditionally red districts, or the party destroys the country out of spite before that can happen.
Given how milquetoast the democrats seem to be on these topics, if those are the only two possibilities, it might be time to start training, or shopping for a home overseas if you’re in the USA.
On the other hand, there’s delaying tactics, and realizing that mixed race kids are getting more common generation by generation. They’re losing power and relevance because they’re hitching their future to a smaller and smaller group. Billionaires certainly have hoarded resources, but they’re not going to fight. They’ve got to have a pool of stupid/brainwashed grunts to do the dirty work. The “pure race” folks are going to have a harder and harder time fighting their fight as their children and grandchildren marry other races, or heaven forbid, turn out to be gay or trans or whatever in a society that’s slowly but surely being more open.
We can minimize their damage if we’re smart about it, and out culture them. We’re not living in their society. By the numbers, they’re living in our society (and not doing a very good job of it. Mr. Rogers would be worried about them.).
How we can disgrace Trump without making him a martyr is a separate topic entirely. There’s only one easy way that I know - show the world that he is allied with (or even among) the groups that they hate.
Example: The only reason Trump is not overwhelmingly popular on Stormfront is because he is sympathetic to Israel and has Jewish people in his family/on staff.
The first time I noticed that the GOP was headed down that path was with Newt Gingrich and his “Contract With America” nonsense in the mid 1990s. It’s been downhill for the GOP ever since. It will be generations before that party ever pulls it back together, if ever.
I saw some interviews today of some Wyoming Republican voters being asked about Liz Cheney. The consensus was that she is a RINO. One of them even said she didn’t like her because she was just voting for all liberal policies and wasn’t a conservative. This really scares the crap out of me, because you have to be about as detached from reality as is theoretically possible to think Liz Cheney is a liberal. For all of her criticism of Trump post Jan 6 (for which I am grateful), she still voted for his agenda almost 93% of the time. Stefanik, the new Trump loyalist golden child, only voted with Trump 77% of the time. I don’t know how we pull people back from this insanity.
Citation? Trump seems to have plenty of nazi supporters, I can’t think of a “mainstream” politician since Pat Buchanan who seemed to have as much support.
