Could the Republicans Eventually Cease to be a Political Force in the US?
I am going to say yes.
Trump holds the Republicans in a very tight grip. He has installed one of his relatives as the National Republican Chairperson. Even the Republicans who lambasted him after 1/6/21 have either been voted out of office, or resigned, or are forced to make nice to him. There might be 3 holdouts on the national level: Romney, Collins, and Marcheschi.
Down ticket, at least in Washington State 5th Congressional District, there are six Republican candidates on the primary ballot. Two come right out, saying they are MAGA candidates. Onc is calling for a Christian Revival. One other doesn't admit he is MAGA, but his campaign website sounds Trumpian. Once candidate hasn't put out any information on herself. There is only one who sounds like he is a moderate Republican (wants to restore Roe v Wade).
With Trump's polls beginning to slip due to the hush money conviction and pending sentencing, it seems he might just pull the whole party down with him.
I think the party will not survive.
Trump holds the Republicans in a very tight grip. He has installed one of his relatives as the National Republican Chairperson. Even the Republicans who lambasted him after 1/6/21 have either been voted out of office, or resigned, or are forced to make nice to him. There might be 3 holdouts on the national level: Romney, Collins, and Marcheschi.
Down ticket, at least in Washington State 5th Congressional District, there are six Republican candidates on the primary ballot. Two come right out, saying they are MAGA candidates. Onc is calling for a Christian Revival. One other doesn't admit he is MAGA, but his campaign website sounds Trumpian. Once candidate hasn't put out any information on herself. There is only one who sounds like he is a moderate Republican (wants to restore Roe v Wade).
With Trump's polls beginning to slip due to the hush money conviction and pending sentencing, it seems he might just pull the whole party down with him.
I think the party will not survive.
Comments
If Trump wins, with Project 2025 on the cards and all the dangerous people around him, then it's very bleak for the USA. And because the USA remains a world power, it's bleak for the rest of us too. Starting with Ukraine, but Taiwan and South Korea will get very nervous, very quickly.
On the other hand, Trump has gutted the Grand Old Party. When he inevitably falls away - as he will - the party will fall apart.
The question is how much more damage he will do before that happens.
AFZ
I'm not sure that a Republican dissolution would actually achieve anything as it would leave a giant hole for a right-wing party to fill which would still have issues with MAGA tendencies.
MAGA itself got liftoff from a few weaknesses of the US political system and those remain unaddressed.
1) A chronic failure to deal with the conomic displacement of deindustrialization.
2) A political system that has far too many veto points leaving it prone to narow-interest capture and unresponsive to popular needs. Labor law reform is the poster-child here.
3) Blatant ignorance of the fact that money, in large amounts, turns from speech onto bribery.
The Korea-related policy most closely associated with trumpism, ie. the outreach to the DPRK, was actually supported by the centre-left government in SK at the time, as that faction had been advocating and pursuing similar policies for years. Democrats who yelled "He's selling out our ally!!" were clueless about internal ROK politics, and were de facto allying themselves with the sort of people in South Korea who think Truman was a commie for firing MacArthur.
Fair point but my analysis is coming from a different place. If Ukraine falls whilst the US stands by and watches, that will embolden other powers with military ambitions. In the past year or so, NK has rachetted up the rhetoric and their posture. If they believe the US wouldn't back SK, that doesn't make invasion inevitable but Soeul would be very, very concerned.
The rhetoric and posturing from the DPRK actually seems pretty typical from what I observed in over two decades of following Korean politics, and it never really amounts to much(see Shooting Of Park Wang-ja for a lethal provocation that barely made the news outside the peninsula). In my observation, the antics tend to ratchet up when the right holds power in Seoul, and settle down when the left takes over. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Well, I suppose if Project 2025 makes it possible for Trump to unilaterally withdraw troops from Korea, with no enforceable objections from congress, the Pentagon, the arms lobby, or any of the other major players, Seoul might be worried. Personally, I'm pretty skeptical it would get to that point, but I can't make hard predictions about the future. My money would be on that NOT happening, FWIW.
As for Taiwan, Trump is the guy who had to be restrained from abandoning the Beijing-friendly One-China Policy that has been in place since Carter's term, so I really don't see him doing anything to embolden the PRC's territorial ambitions. I'm not sure isolationism on Ukraine is the best template for how Trump would respond in Taiwan.
If the Republican Party goes, would it be replaced with something more like that, or something worse?
I have no idea.
Even if Trump loses this election, it is likely to be close. And demographic change does not seem to be working against Republicans, because they are seeing increasing levels of support (though not majority support) among young voters, Latinos, and African Americans.
If Trump loses and decides not to run again, or if he wins and can't run for reelection, he is likely to have a big influence on whoever the next Republican presidential candidate is. And even if the next Republican presidential candidate is not someone endorsed by Trump (it may be even someone Trump publicly criticizes), they are still likely to be someone who is closer to Trump in rhetoric and policies (if not in personal behavior) than the pre-Trump GOP mainstream.
The U.S. is in what is described by historians as the Sixth Party System, though some hypothesize that we've transitioned into the seventh.
This has happened before. The Whigs (American version) were a fairly potent political force as late as 1852, but by 1856 had almost completely disintegrated. By 1860 the northern Whigs had re-organized themselves into the Republican party and were strong enough to win the presidency and control of both houses of Congress. Something similar happened with the collapse of the Federalist party in the late 1810s.
As far as the current Republican party goes, it seems to have transformed itself into a cult of personality around Donald Trump. Given his mortality (and his apparently accelerating mental decompensation) something destabilizing is going to happen to the Republican party when Trump leaves the political stage, however that occurs.
And, in fact, the Democrats as a continuous entity go back to the 1820s, with Andrew Jackson and his anti-plutocratic policies uniting bank-haters of all types, from southern slavemasters to New England utopians.
(Contrary to popular wisdom, I believe you can trace a basic economic and ideological evolution between Jackson's smallholding frontiersmen and Biden's swifties, but I won't get into that right now.)
Obviously not everyone is going to agree that we (the Democrats) are “right wing.”
The usual thing would be for someone to come on and say "Well, they're right-wing by European standards", but I'm not quite buying that in the era of Le Pen and Meloni. Granted, you can find right-wing movements in the USA that don't really exist in Western Europe and the Commonwealth Realms(eg. anti-choice), but the general themes and ambience among conservatives are the same throughout the west.
Right, but Democrats are not conservatives by many measures.
I've always translated this as "I want a lot of social safety net programs but I don't want to pay for them".
I never thought "socially liberal" relates to the safety net. More that you think society should be more tolerant/inclusive of previously marginalized groups.
My standing gag about the position is "Happy to march in a Pride parade, as long as it's funded by corporate sponsors and not property taxes."
"Black and white should have an equally starve under a bridge if they are out of work."
I'm gonna re-write that with what I assume was the intended syntax.
And, yes, I've also heard that as a reductionist parody of libertarianism, which is basically just "fiscally conservative/socially liberal" in its most doctrinaire form.
Thank you, and yes.
In Europe, liberal parties are divided between market/classical liberal parties, which are usually socially liberal in the American sense but are otherwise strongly in favor of a free market, and social liberals (the modern day descendants of 19th century Radicals), who think that true individual liberty requires some government intervention in the market, whether to guarantee “positive liberties” such as healthcare, education, or a clean environment, or to ensure “equality of opportunity” if not equality of outcome. Social liberal parties (which only really have any relevance in European countries with the largest number of parties in parliament, such as the Netherlands (where the social liberal party is D66) and Denmark (where the social liberal party is Radikale Venstre), are to the left of conservative and market liberal parties on economic issues, but to the right of social democratic parties, and historically have formed coalitions with both sides. They tend to be most opposed to forming coalitions with social conservative parties like Christian Democrats (in those countries where the Christian part of Christian Democrat still means anything), and populist right parties (particularly over immigration).
American “Liberalism” has a lot in common with European Social
Liberalism, which is why Americans who would be considered market liberals in Europe call themselves “socially liberal but economically conservative”.
The phrase you hear most often though is “socially liberal but fiscally conservative”, which is a bit of a cop-out. Fiscally conservative literally means that you don’t want government budget deficits. But in practice people who say it mean that they want lower taxes and lower sending and don’t want government deficits, which means government programs need to be cut. But they almost never are willing to say what programs they are willing to cut. “Fiscal conservatives” usually break rank with other Democrats whenever there is a desire or need for new spending, a new government program, or a tax raise. And when there is a budget crisis (real, as when Social Security is predicted to run out of money next decade, or invented, as the endless fiscal cliffs Republicans keep threatening to take is over), then Democratic fiscal conservative wonks come out with their plans to make cuts to Social Security benefits, raise the retirement age, or make cuts elsewhere. They don’t talk that much about raising tax revenue to fill whatever gap needs to be filled, unless they get at least some of the cuts they have been keeping in their drawers for years.
Fiscal conservatives were influential among Democrats in protest of the budget deficits generated by Reagan’s tax cuts and military spending. Then they had a bit of a heyday under Clinton, especially once Republicans took Congress and Clinton tacked even more to the right. And Obama paid deference to them. But when Trump blew up Republican orthodoxy (except tax cuts for the ultra wealthy - they still like that), Democrats including Biden felt free to not act like fiscal conservatives mattered that much in the Democratic Party anymore. But they do still matter somewhat, at least in the Senate.
P.S. I’m also fully aware that Republican anger over deficits has never extended to Republican Presidents.
I translate it as "I'm greedy and self-indulgent".
Yes. A social liberal who supports personal freedom but opposes state intervention against discrimination would be a libertarian. (Well, assuming he also opposed every other form of state intervention in the economy, which I assume he would.)
“Socially liberal, economically conservative” people mostly don’t want to get rid of Social Security and Medicare, and even if they don’t like programs like those, they generally still support the existence of public schools, driver’s licenses, legally-licensed professions (like in healthcare, law, etc.), bans on setting up a recreational heroin and crack cocaine shop that also sells ice cream across the street from an elementary school, bans on selling your own kidney to someone else, bans on indentured servitude contracts and other modern day “consensual” forms of slavery, etc. If you asked an attendee at the US Libertarian Party national convention, though, I wouldn’t be so sure.
But someone who calls themselves a small-l libertarian or just votes Libertarian because they don’t like either major party candidate, fine. I think “market liberal” or “classical liberal” is a better description of their ideology, though. Libertarian ideology tends to have more of an anti-statist edge to it.
Yes, but the Libertarian Party takes both of those qualities to an extreme.
The Democratic Party
is economically centrist to center-left, and socially liberal.
“Economically liberal” is confusing, so I don’t use the phrase, because even in the US it can mean economically on the left or being pro-free market, so therefore being economically on the right.
I think it's more that that libertarians would remove the state almost entirely from the equation, a situation which would then give rise to some very stark extremes, of the type which don't exist in our more nuanced body-politic. An example I like to use...
In the libertarian utopia, there would be no mandatory education, and no hate-speech laws, so there'd be nothing to stop some fundie parents from home-schooling their kids with a curriculum including Leviticus as the template for sexual morality.
Sounds like the fundie paradise, but the flip side is that, with no zoning or blue laws, there'd be nothing to stop someone from opening a gay leather brothel, complete with illustrated signage, across the street from the fundies' house.
So, imagine a buncha Reconstructionist Calvinists buy 100 houses in a town, and sell them to their co-religionists, with a condition that the homes can only be sold to other Reconstructionists. And, also, to continue living there, they have to agree to follow the sexual prohibitions laid out in Leviticus(IOW no leather bars), or be sued for confiscation of their homes and expulsion from the village. If the outcasts refuse to leave the property, the state police(secular) can be called to haul 'em out, but other than that, the theocracy is run entirely on the basis of voluntary submission.
One might see why I am doubtful this could ever work. Even among the wild-eyed witch-hunters, it's gonna be tough to find a hundred who a) will all wanna move to the same neighbourhood, and b) be willing to sign a contract banning them from ever selling their house to a non-Reconstructionist.
Yeah, I suspect nowadays it could only really be done through the creation of a libertarian utopia. And even if they were able to achieve that, "Only sell to Reconstructionists" is likely gonna be a much heavier burden than "Only sell to whites".
But question...
When you say that the covenants are "not enforecable", do you mean because courts won't uphold them? Or just because nobody really bothers honoring them anymore?
Anti-black and anti-Jewish covenants in real estate communities will not hold up in court, and I’ve never heard of anyone still attempting to enforce them, but they may remain on paper in some places because they were so widespread in all parts of the country.
Chautauquas were Methodist vacation communities that had a revivalist character in their early history but nowadays are mostly just places of natural beauty where people have vacation homes.
The issue of community covenants was in the news not that long ago regarding a Chautauqua called the Bay View Association in Michigan:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_View_Association
He left the board after they wouldn’t count a co-op member’s sister as “close family” and therefore insisted that the member be penalized in her co-op dues for “subletting” the second apartment she owned in the building when she let her sister live there for free.
And a good thing, too.
Wow. That's some interesting stuff about the Chautauquas. I gather from wiki that they were connected to the lecture society of the same name, but the details of the connection are hard to follow. Apparently, the educational group had a Methodist co-founder.
It was kinda quirky to see the Chautauqua educational clubs back in the news a coupla years ago, with the assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie.