What Is Happening to the Republican Party?

[DonViejo]

March 8, 2021 at 9:00 am EST By Taegan Goddard

A must-read from Jelani Cobb:

“Despite the United States’ reputation as the most stable democracy in the world, most of the political parties born in this country, including major ones, have ceased to exist. The Republican Party itself was built on the ruins of the Whigs, a party that broke apart in the tempests leading to the Civil War. Considering that history, it’s worth asking whether the party of Lincoln, now the party of Trump, is engaged in conflicts so intense that it will go the way of the Whigs.”

###

https://politicalwire.com/2021/03/08/what-is-happening-to-the-republican-party/

[TheBlackAdder]

1. They are exiting the chrysalis stage.

[struggle4progress]

4. Re-emerging as a venomous jellyfish!

[panader0]

2. Republicans now would consider Eisenhower's policy too liberal.

Last edited Mon Mar 8, 2021, 01:50 PM - Edit history (1)

Check out this link to the R party platform from 1956. It's what todays Democrats want:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1956-republican-platform/

[Hortensis]

6. And Eisenhower was famously a proud progressive conservative.

The big money corruption he warned about purged progressivism and traditional conservatism from the party as impediments to their goals.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. They became so self-righteous, arrogant, and inward-focused

that they fumbled all issues that didn't directly benefit them and thus handed Democrats control of the entire playing field. However we still must make bank on their errors, deflect their anger and lies, and improve everything in order to bury them forever.

[Hortensis]

5. FWIW, the party of Lincoln came to be dominated by business-serving conservatives

in the decades following Lincoln's death and ceased to exist as anything Lincoln would have joined long before the turn of the 20th century.

Btw, the party's liberal wing of Lincoln's day eventually moved to and took over the moribund Democratic Party, which had been effectively destroyed earlier in the century by the same kind of conservatives who are currently destroying the Republican Party.

Morphing isn't as dramatic as disappearing, but the only thing about THIS Republican Party that goes back to Lincoln is the name.

[Ponietz]

7. The sobering penultimate paragraph:

The idea that the nation would thrive with two parties was contingent upon both of them holding a shared version of reality. It’s also the case that a demographic clearly in the thrall of radicalizing conspiracy theories, and convinced that it stands no chance of exercising its will through electoral politics, will potentially turn to violence as a regular form of expression. The A.E.I. study found that fifty-six per cent of Republicans believe that the use of force may be necessary to save “the traditional American way of life.” The obvious concern should be that January 6th was not a culmination but, rather, a preface to more violence conducted under the same banners.