The party, and its’ voters are HIS asset, and alternative Republican leaders will have to claw it away from his cold dead hand. This is how he thinks. He will use anything to prop up his image and his wealth. In politics he found his greatest grift ever. Donald Trump is to politics as L. Ron Hubbard is to religion. He’s not going away as much as many “reasonable” Republicans wish it to be so. Now, his freedom depends on this too.
For years I thought there would be a line crossed and reasonable Republicans would have their “Come to Jesus” moment and drop him like the dirty scumbag he is. I kept thinking this would happen for all of 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. In 2021, after the Insurrection and what did not happen as a result, I realized we were asking the wrong question. The question is not what will cause them to drop Trump, the real question is why they supported him this long. The simple answer is he has the power to direct a large block of Republican voters, and a significant subset of those voters are not really Republicans. A significant subset voted for Trump because they liked the show and he tickled their hate bone. They had not voted consistently before and they will likely go back to not voting when he’s gone. How big of a subset is that group? Hard to tell, but big enough to make a big difference.
Remember the 2012 post-mortem study on Romney’s loss? The one where it said to garner wider appeal they maybe should stop being so racist and hostile to women? Well, the Republican Party with the help of people like Rush Limbaugh said “fuck that shit, we’re doubling down on hate and racism and at least then we’ll be excited with our candidate.” Trump fit that bill to a T and by freakish luck, he actually won. If you’re wise, you learn more from failure than success. Moreover, success can be truly blinding if you misinterpret its’ true sources. Republicans misinterpreted it completely and the only thing that hasn't made it a total unmitigated disaster much sooner are the following: 1) the structural advantages they have with the Electoral College and the Senate, 2) Their political ruthlessness that allows them to ignore ideological consistency or worry about hypocrisy, 3) A highly effective voter suppression strategy that brought Big Data to gerrymandering and new Jim Crow methods of blocking lots of people from easily voting.
I am not in the prediction business anymore. I don’t know how this is going to play out, but I’m pretty sure its going to get uglier and take longer than most people think. I certainly don’t mind a bit of a Republican civil war. However, wars are unpredictable and this fight is going to hurt us all. I’m glad the election went the way it did and I love reading the emerging narratives about Republicans reaping the rancid whirlwind they created and so richly deserve to eat, but in the end we don't need republicans to become Democrats. We need a right-leaning party in our political system that comes back to reality so that we can start to try solving many of our big real problems again.