What happens to the Republican Party now? (2 Viewers)

[MT15]

This election nonsense by Trump may end up splitting up the Republican Party. I just don’t see how the one third (?) who are principled conservatives can stay in the same party with Trump sycophants who are willing to sign onto the TX Supreme Court case.

We also saw the alt right types chanting “destroy the GOP” in Washington today because they didn’t keep Trump in power. I think the Q types will also hold the same ill will toward the traditional Republican Party. In fact its quite possible that all the voters who are really in a Trump personality cult will also blame the GOP for his loss. It’s only a matter of time IMO before Trump himself gets around to blaming the GOP.

There is some discussion of this on Twitter. What do you all think?

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

Republican voters *love* that shirte.

SOME love that.
I prefer someone dignified.
I like people who win the debate by the merit of their ideas...not by name calling and belittling.

 

[MT15]

Yes, but Steve do you represent a majority of the R voters? I’m afraid you no longer do.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

Yes, but Steve do you represent a majority of the R voters? I’m afraid you no longer do.

As I said a week ago, I have a faint hope that I am in the "Silent Republican Majority"
Hopefully folks like me will show up at the polls and elect mature / normal candidates and then the media can discuss how "the silent majority" made their voices heard...not on Twitter but at the polls.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

As I said a week ago, I have a faint hope that I am in the "Silent Republican Majority"
Hopefully folks like me will show up at the polls and elect mature / normal candidates and then the media can discuss how "the silent majority" made their voices heard...not on Twitter but at the polls.

Assuming the candidates in the video are the types on the ballot this November, do you think voting for them instead of abstaining (or voting for a Democrat/third party) is enabling them by sending the message that this behavior does not cost them votes?

 

[MT15]

As I said a week ago, I have a faint hope that I am in the "Silent Republican Majority"
Hopefully folks like me will show up at the polls and elect mature / normal candidates and then the media can discuss how "the silent majority" made their voices heard...not on Twitter but at the polls.

I hope so too. But I’m afraid there are going to be lots of places where the mature/normal R candidate doesn’t exist. That’s when people like you will have a huge decision to make.

Lots of Rs and former Rs have already made their decisions. I listen to Charlie Sykes somewhat regularly on his podcast. I listen to Tim Miller and Joe Walsh occasionally. I have heard Denver Riggleman speak on this subject. These folks know the danger posed by the current direction of the majority of the R party. They all acknowledge the danger currently presenting itself.

I know I have zero party loyalty to the R party. They’re leading us down an un-American path towards authoritarianism. America cannot survive if people like you look the other way and deny the problems that exist.

My fervent hope is that after a couple of election cycles we will root out the extremists in the R party. And then we can return to something approaching a more normal situation. That this whole thing will be looked at as an aberration that passed. But it won’t pass unless people are willing to elect the sane alternative, no matter which party they represent. We simply cannot afford to have party loyalty right now. Too many mainstream R politicians are looking the other way and giving tacit approval to the crazies with their silence.

 

[MT15]

This is objectively funny, if true:

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

Sadly, that's not the worst of it:



One of these men will likely be a United States Senator.

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

This, from the WaPo editorial board, underscores the problem with the GOP, especially the two paragraphs I quoted:

‘Violent and threatening political rhetoric, normalized and encouraged by former president Donald Trump, is metastasizing in the Republican Party. As nearly a third of GOP voters tell pollsters that violence might be required to “save our country,” some officeholders and candidates who espouse menacing views are rewarded with fundraising and social media success. Too often, mainstream party leaders — the very voices who should be drawing the line at hate speech — are silent.

Silence is complicity. By not speaking out even in response to overt calls for lethal vengeance and death threats against political foes, Republican officials send a clear message that violence itself is a plausible alternative to debate, and even a palatable one.’

When mainstream R politicians turn a blind eye to the violent rhetoric they are effectively endorsing it. Such a party just should not be rewarded at the ballot box. It just shouldn’t.

Opinion | Trump’s violent political rhetoric is metastasizing in the Republican Party — The Washington Post

In the Republican Party, overt calls for violence are too often greeted with silence. The effect is to normalize rhetoric that should be disqualifying.

apple.news

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

Not surprising people attempt to justify violence in the name of 'saving the country' -- most of them are probably fueled by religious fanaticism. It's merely a continuation of the Crusades.



^ Is usually the answer to most GOP culture war positions. Nowadays you have millions of keyboard warriors miraculously claiming to know what God wills!

 

[dtc]

As I said a week ago, I have a faint hope that I am in the "Silent Republican Majority"
Hopefully folks like me will show up at the polls and elect mature / normal candidates and then the media can discuss how "the silent majority" made their voices heard...not on Twitter but at the polls.

The only way you're going to do that is to completely forsake the REpublican party and vote for Democrats. You have about 3 candidates nationwide who are Republicans that someone like you or I could vote for and none in my district.

My choice would be Matt Gaetz or worse and that's not a choice. In order to beat back the crazy, you have to vote them out and it's not going to happen. There aren't enough real conservatives with morals and intellect left to do it.

Sorry.

 

[dtc]

Because they are stupid and he's crazy.

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

The only way you're going to do that is to completely forsake the REpublican party and vote for Democrats. You have about 3 candidates nationwide who are Republicans that someone like you or I could vote for and none in my district.

My choice would be Matt Gaetz or worse and that's not a choice. In order to beat back the crazy, you have to vote them out and it's not going to happen. There aren't enough real conservatives with morals and intellect left to do it.

Sorry.

Alternatively, Democrats should register as Republicans and vote heavily in GOP primaries for the non-Trumpistas. You can always vote for whoever in the general election. I suspect, of course, that if this were to happen to any large degree the GOP would find a way of placing restrictions on party registration/primary voting.

 

[MT15]

Alternatively, Democrats should register as Republicans and vote heavily in GOP primaries for the non-Trumpistas. You can always vote for whoever in the general election. I suspect, of course, that if this were to happen to any large degree the GOP would find a way of placing restrictions on party registration/primary voting.

Wyoming Rs are already trying to do so because Dems are planning to vote for Cheney in the primary.

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

Wyoming Rs are already trying to do so because Dems are planning to vote for Cheney in the primary.

I wonder if the Louisiana GOP will attempt to change the open primary system we have here. There is talk the Democrats will not field an 'official' candidate for governor and subtly throw their support behind Billy Nungesser so he can beat Jeff Landry.

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

After being a Republican all my life and coming from a family that has been Republican since Lincoln I left the party in 2007. In my opinion, that's what has to be done by those of us who are aware of how far the GOP and the conservative movement have fallen.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Article saying basically that the Big Lie may be standard operating procedure moving forward for any Democratic win
===========================================================

Earlier this month, Team Trump claimed in court that their efforts to nullify Joe Biden’s victory could not possibly have been fraudulent or be described as a criminal conspiracy, because those in and around the White House had merely been acting on the basis of sincerely held suspicions.

This sparked the latest round in the never-ending debate over whether or not Republicans actually believe that the election was stolen from them. Politically, it is important to push back against the opportunistic ways in which Republicans up and down the country have been using the “big lie”. But if we are trying to understand what is animating the right’s rapidly accelerating radicalization against democracy, binary assumptions of Republicans as either true believers or power-hungry cynics are not very helpful and actually obscure more than they illuminate.

In some fundamental way, Republicans are both. What we really need to grapple with is why so many Republicans are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities.

Surveys have consistently indicated that a clear majority, probably about two-thirds, of Republicans consider Biden an illegitimate president. It’s highly likely that many of them are well aware that some of the specific conspiratorial claims emanating from the right – fake ballots? Lost ballots? “Illegals” voting? – are bogus. But they don’t seem to care about the specifics. They just believe Biden shouldn’t be president.

What is most alarming is the underlying ideology that leads so many on the right to consider Democratic victories invalid – even if they concede there was nothing technically wrong with how the election was conducted. It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an “un-American” project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism. Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of “real” America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism and wokeism.

Even if they don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction – and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well. Republicans didn’t start from an assessment of how the 2020 election went down and come away from that exercise with sincerely held doubts.

The rationalization worked backwards: They looked at the outcome and decided it must not stand. In other words, accusations of fraud gain plausibility among conservatives not because of empirical evidence, but because they adhere to the “higher truth” of who is and who is not legitimately representing – and therefore entitled to rule – “real” America...........

Ellmers is outraged precisely because he accepts the fact that a majority voted for Biden, that “authentic Americans” have become the minority in a country which they are supposedly entitled to dominate. Here we have a striking glimpse of the depth of despair underlying the pervasive siege mentality on the right. What’s scandalous about the 2020 election, in this interpretation, is not that it was “stolen”, but that “un-American” forces straightforwardly won.

Reactionaries like Ellmers have internalized the idea that they represent a persecuted minority, fighting with their backs against the wall in a desperate effort to defend “authentic America”. They dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election not necessarily on the basis of fraud and conspiracy but because democracy itself subverted the will of “real America” by allowing the “wrong” people too much of an influence on the fate of the country.

Trump’s incessant lies represent a vulgar, clumsy, narcissistic strand of conspiratorial thinking; those lies are shared by some, opportunistically used by many, and widely accepted on the right because they adhere to a “higher truth”: “we” are entitled to rule in America. That’s what is behind the widespread support for, or willingness to accept, any kind of suspicion, regardless of whether or not there is any shred of empirical evidence. If an election doesn’t result in “us” being in power, it must be illegitimate, as we are “real America”; if it puts “them” in charge, it cannot be accepted, as they are out to destroy the nation...........

MSN

www.msn.com

 

[MT15]

This is from a NYT weekly column where a liberal journalist and a conservative journalist have a conversation about current events. This comment from the conservative journalist (Bret Stephens) really struck a chord with me about the current state of the R party (emphasis mine).

“Bret: I feel just the same way about Vermont and Texas. But about Cheney’s chances, I wouldn’t bet on them. A party with a cult-of-personality problem is like people with a substance abuse problem, meaning they’re going to ride the addiction to rock bottom.”

This is why I have concluded that I cannot in good conscience vote for any Republican who is not actively working to end the influence of Trump. There are not very many of them. If they will not stand up against Trump, we cannot reward them with the opportunity to lead us. They don’t deserve it.