The GOP can't be saved. Center-right voters need to become Biden Republicans.

[brooklynite]

[link:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/07/gop-cant-be-saved-center-right-voters-need-become-biden-republicansWashington Post]

Most Republicans don’t care that Trump locked up children, cozied up to white supremacists, tear-gassed peaceful protesters, benefited from Russian help in both of his campaigns, egregiously mishandled the pandemic, incited a violent attack on the Capitol and even faced fraud complaints from his own donors. A new Reuters-Ipsos poll finds that 81 percent of Republicans have a favorable impression of Trump. Wait. It gets worse: 60 percent say the 2020 election was stolen from him, only 28 percent say he is even partly to blame for the Capitol insurrection, and 55 percent say that the Capitol attack “was led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad.”

This is a portrait of a party that can’t be saved — at least in the foreseeable future. The GOP remains a cult of personality for the worst president in U.S. history. It has become a bastion of irrationality, conspiracy mongering, racism, nativism and anti-scientific prejudices.

So what should a sane, center-right voter — someone who might have voted for the GOP in the past — do under those circumstances?

There has been talk of forming a third party, but it’s not likely to succeed in our winner-take-all political system. Smaller parties flourish only in countries with proportional representation. There hasn’t been a successful third party in the United States since the 1850s, when the GOP arose out of the wreckage of the Whig Party. We can and should undermine the political duopoly with reforms such as multi-member congressional districts, ranked-choice voting and nonpartisan primaries. Such steps, which are being pushed by Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), would make moderate candidates and even third-party candidates more viable.

But we won’t transform our political system anytime soon. In the meantime, centrists have a binary choice: Support either an increasingly extremist and obstructionist Republican Party or a Democratic Party that, under President Biden, is working to solve our most pressing problems.

An observation: a bigger-tent Democratic Party would likely become more moderate.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. Republican voters who want progress NEED to make a decision and soon.

For they are seeing that Joe Biden is a man of his word. His bold plans are getting their support being that they too need jobs, consistent income, health care security, as well as assurances for the future.

They are also seeing that Congressional Republicans care about staying in their elected positions despite their opposition to doing the right thing for the people and country, then will go on the campaign blitz BLAMING everybody but themselves. They think they have a winning strategy, THEY DON'T!

Democrats have been given an opportunity here to get the message out that they understand what this country needs. People will listen because they hunger for the truth.

The GOP's days are numbered.

[JHB]

2. Adding people who are still with the GOP at this late date will not make us more "moderate"

What I would support encouraging is engaging with these sorts of Republicans to wean them off the kool-aid enough that they can admit that their nightmare scenarios of Democratic governance are paranoid fantasies fed by the same forces that turned the rest of their party into a pack of loons, and maybe they can best serve their interests and get their party back by staying in it but torpedoing the zealots, cultists, and crazies at every opportunity. Don't become a Democrat, but vote for us until that hellbeast of yours starves, shrinks, and goes back under its rock.

[uponit7771]

3. K&R, seeing Biden is doing a tone of things that are popular with republicans

[empedocles]

5. The way things get done. The way Biden and Pelosi got their present positions

[Autumn]

4. No. Center-right voters need to work their asses off to save their Republican party. nt

[sop]

6. On issue after issue, Republicans are much more moderate and liberal than even they will admit.

I know a number of self-identifying "conservative Republicans" who support strengthening social security and medicare, improving public schools, rebuilding infrastructure, protecting clean air and water, reigning in predatory corporations, taxing the very wealthy, etc.

While they constantly complain about "liberal" policies and the "Democrat party," Republicans are more likely to support so-called liberal policies piecemeal. To his credit, Biden has broken down his agenda into distinct policies, avoiding the tendency of expressing an overarching liberal ideology.