I’ve been pessimistic about the long predicted Republican crack up. My sense was that few Republican senators would vote to convict Trump. And with or without Trump, the GOP would revert to the weird, expedient coalition it has enjoyed since Reagan—of corporate moguls, libertarians, evangelicals, and status-anxious low-education whites.
The Tea Party pre-existed Trump. If Trump lost the affections of QAnon and the Proud Boys as a wimpy loser, or went to prison, some other fuehrer would arise to lead the far right. And the corporate
Republicans would go right on accommodating the next Trump.
But one thing could upend that calculus. The Patriot Party!
Trump has convinced himself that the threat of a third party will discipline Senate Republicans to vote against convicting him. But that’s backwards.
Should Trump actually act on that threat, there will be a stampede of Republican senators to convict, so that a third-party Trump is barred from running in 2024, or ever. And at that point, the Republican fracture will be real.
Why? Because something like two-thirds of the Republican base is still pro-Trump, and would follow him into a third party even if he personally is barred from running.
This would produce three way contests for governor, senator, representative, and down-ballot races—with the right split into two parties, and the Democrat winning. After a few elections, long enough to establish Democrats as the governing party for a generation,
remnant center-right Republicans would eventually defect to the Democratic Party, and it would be the end of the GOP.
Political scientists warn that third parties are doomed in America because the electoral system is biased against them—no proportional representation, first-past-the-post elections, and so on. It takes an epochal event, such as the anti-slavery movement in the 1850s allowing the new Republican Party to displace the Whigs.
Or Donald Trump.
Is Trump that vain? Is he that dumb?
Sometimes he’s dumb like a fox. Other times, he’s stubborn as an ox. His vain obtuseness on the threat of a mass-killer pandemic cost him the election.
For four awful years, Trump’s wrecking ball was aimed at American democracy. Now it’s aimed at the GOP. And the shamelessly opportunist Republicans richly earned it. Call it poetic justice.
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