Trump Has Destroyed The Republican Party

[Celerity]

Trump destroyed the state parties in battleground states just in time for the most important election of his life.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/trump-has-destroyed-the-republican

https://archive.li/nwlSf



Inertia is the tendency for an object in motion to stay in motion. It’s a law of physics that, surprisingly, frequently applies to human behavior and institutions. What this means in practical terms is that even when something fundamental changes, whether for good or ill, there is often a lag time until we see the effect of those changes. Another way of putting it is “a fish rots from the head down.” The Republican Party is the fish in question and it is starting to decompose. As bad as the stench is, what you are seeing (or smelling) is the slow and inevitable death of an organization consumed by the cancer of Trumpism.

The (college) party is over

Back in May, I wrote about Trumpism infecting college Young Republican clubs. Once upon a time, these clubs were incubators for baby Republicans who would grow up to hate all the right people and unquestioningly pursue the Republican agenda. They would assist state GOP parties with get out the vote efforts and pushing local policy. They, like college Democratic clubs, were part of the boring machinery that gets work done. But that was then and this is now. Trump followers don’t have time for the boring drudge work needed to pass zoning laws to disadvantage Black families or push tax cuts that will slowly strangle homeless shelters while lining the pockets of real estate developers. That isn’t as exciting as getting on camera and openly endorsing political violence.

Why bother with local politics when being the loudest, most abrasive asshole possible will garner notoriety in a party that rewards loud abrasive assholes? Newt Gingrich really started the ball rolling on this with the Tea Party was the most obvious manifestation. At least until Trump made it the only real metric of success in the GOP. Now, being good at your job as a Republican is almost entirely defined by how awful you are as a human being. The downside of this is that the Republican Party, already highly dysfunctional at the national level, is starting to break apart at every level. If you think the college level stuff is bad, wait until you see what’s happening to the state parties.

Broke, in more ways than one

While they are not usually covered in glory, state parties are kind of important when it comes to elections. They hold primaries and organize little things like registration and get out the vote drives. They keep an eye on polling places and report any shenanigans, legitimate or accidental. They’re pretty vital to the process, especially in swing states where 20,000 votes can mean the difference between control of the Senate and the White House. They’re really important in helping determine who controls the state legislature and the governor’s mansion. And yet, Republican state parties across the country are on the verge of collapse, ideologically, organizationally, and financially. The National Review, of all places, has been unsparing in its reporting about this:



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[Wounded Bear]

1. It's been teetering on the edge for many years...

trump just pushed it over.

[Cosmocat]

17. He is a symptom, not the cause

Their relentless pandering to the worst instincts of the human spirit for MANY decades led to him being able to take the party over.

[LonePirate]

2. He simply exposed the party's core value for all to see: an unlimited desire for power and control.

[rubbersole]

3. And willing to spend any amount and cheat whenever they can.

[Mysterian]

16. And willing to end democracy in the USA and install the dictatorship

of a make-up splattered con-man.

[PJMcK]

12. Republicans used to have serious policy ideas

While I didn’t agree with them, the ideas were put forth clearly: lower taxes, strong military, conservative fiscal policies, etc.

All of that began to change when Reagan, Gingrich and Limbaugh began their insulting and hypocritical political attacks. It all came to a head in 2020 when the party didn’t bother having a national political platform. Republicans didn’t stand for anything but Trump!

We may be seeing something remarkable, the demise of a political party. Republicanism can be replaced but the party is so fractured, it’s hard to see it re-forming into a national force again.

If they asked me, and they won’t, I’d tell them their first step out of the woods is to dump Trump. They won’t and so we’ll see something incredible over the next year and a half.

[Cosmocat]

19. Winner chicken dinner

This ...

[Initech]

4. Fox News, Reagan and Limbaugh destroyed the GOP.

Trump pushed what was left of it off the edge.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. Don't forget me!!! cries Newt Gingrich

[BigmanPigman]

6. He exposed them for the hate filled, greedy hypocrites that they

are and have been. When the GQP tried to desperately hold onto their old white male voters (who are now the minority) they knew their future in the US was hanging on by their fingernails. So they must lie, cheat and steal to get any last hanger-on as possible. The media and SCOTUS is part of the problem, too.

[SunSeeker]

7. The GOP was a house of cards before Trump.

The Republican Party is nothing more than a front for the ultra rich, who have enticed the stupid and bigots by playing to their stupidity and bigotry, to get them to vote against their own financial interests in favor of the rich.

Trump just stepped in and took the racist rubes for all they're worth. They were there for the picking, ready to follow the charismatic racist Pied Piper they had been waiting for since the last charismatic racist Pied Piper (Reagan).

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

8. Most people missed how they had some San Andreas-level

Fault lines that weren't very stable. Since the late 70s, the party has always had four basic groups at play:

Of course the big one has been your standard wealthy, establishment big-business group. Then there are he mostly apathetic white suburban Americans who vote r because dad did, the religious right, and the toxic racist brew of former Dixiecrats (or their descendants) and former archconservative Northern Democrats.

Thing is, most of these groups rubbed each other the wrong way, a little or a lot. The party was really about being strange bedfellows. The corporatists found all of the others useful idiots. The evangelicals and Dixiecrats hated how the corporatists and suburbanites weren't all-in on the reactionary social issues. The suburbanites were too busy navigating the rat race to do more than wish the evangelicals and Dixiecrats would stop being so annoying and embarrassing, but they're too polite to say it.

I always thought that a Democrat would come along to find the weak spot that fractured them and cause a political earthquake that tears the entire party apart. It wouldn't even have taken much pressure to do it, only the will to find it--and get to work.

It turned out that one didn't need brains or even intent to do it. All it took was one ignorant, self-serving narcissist to get them at each other's throats.

It's actually a rather satisfying development, when you think about it.

[Duppers]

11. 👍 +100

[617Blue]

21. The bigots will no longer settle for the subtle dog whistle

they want the full throated scream.

The party isn't necessarily shrinking - yet, but the factions have been exposed. The shoe is on the other foot now. The mouth breathers had to settle for a corporatist to get some of what what they wanted. Will the corporatists settle for a mouth breather to get what they want? My guess is yes. These people are masters at rationalization.

[cstanleytech]

9. The roaches are scattering because he exposed the truth of the type of people that

make up the majority of the Republican party.

[NJCher]

10. I couldn't get the

Rest of the article, even from the archive link.

[malaise]

13. The Party's Over 😀😀

[JHB]

14. Republicans destroyed the Republican Party. Trump is the vulture feeding on its carcass

This ever-ratcheting-up extremism has been part of Republican culture ever since the Conservative Movement took over and they politically exterminated the Rockefeller Republicans.

They milked bigotry, Vietnam resentment, misogyny, homophobia, religious extremism, and where they didn't have anything real to resent, they made stuff up.

They built a media bubble that constantly fed back on itself. They believed their own advertising.

They built a party base of Ahabs, and the orange guy came along and promised them white whale steak dinners for life (and the hagfish will pay for it).

They Built That.

[BlueTsunami2018]

15. They're like herpes, they never go away.

And they’re still extremely viable as a party. They have the House and the courts.

I think they’re much closer to achieving their end goal of fascist theocratic oligarchy than they are of going extinct or being destroyed.

[617Blue]

18. Incompetent kooks with zero experience or knowledge

tend to fail. This is what they want to do to our governmental institutions. On purpose.

[ITAL]

20. I know people here

Are saying the Party had been dead for decades, but that's just the Democrat coming out of everyone.

The Republicans were a completely viable Party until the last few years. Once the bomb throwers started taking out the local machinery about a decade ago, which was exacerbated by Trump's rise and demand of total fealty, their day to day apparatus just died like the article says. When the folks that call people, run meetings, and drop the balloons get forced out or stop coming -- all you get are the rabble. And they don't know how to run things.

[TwilightZone]

22. Their demise is often greatly exaggerated, as it is here.

I'll consider them destroyed when Democrats are winning 2/3 of the elections at all levels of government.

Calling a party that has a near-split in the Senate, a slight edge in the House, and control of half of the governor ships and nearly 60% of state legislatures "destroyed" is significantly premature.

Trump isn't the cause. He's just a symptom. This trend is nothing new. It's been clear ever since Obama was elected.

[tanyev]

23. Mmm, schadenfreudelicious!

[William769]

24. I would argue the The Republican Party destroyed The Republican Party

and it started in the mid 90's.