Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 15 2020 06:26pm)

I think so too, but at the same time, it's easy to see the RNC make an attempt at going back to a Romney-Ryan-esque platform, flavored with some wokeism and sucking up to minorities and women. Particularly if it indeed is a landslide. We should never forget that Trump basically staged a hostile takeover of the Republican party in 2015/16. The RNC establishment was never genuinely behind him, they just tolerated him as long as the base went nuts for him and he enabled them to achieve their own goals (tax cuts, conservative judges). Ideologically and policy-wise, I think that only very few of them want to continue a populist path.


Basically, Trump is Ramsay Bolton, and guys he humiliated like Cruz or Graham are his hounds - they got beaten into submission and will they follow their master's lead as long as he's in charge, but they'd love nothing more than to tear him apart as soon as he shows weakness. And there's nothing weaker than a SAD!!! loser.

Quote (IceMage @ Oct 15 2020 05:29pm)

We'll always disagree on why Trump won. While I think he took advantage of weaknesses of the Republican party on immigration and trade, it's mostly a personality cult.

Quote (MizzouFTW @ Oct 15 2020 06:34pm)

I agree with you. When I ask people why they voted for Trump I usually just get the answer, "he was something different"

Quote (IceMage @ 16 Oct 2020 00:29)

We'll always disagree on why Trump won. While I think he took advantage of weaknesses of the Republican party on immigration and trade, it's mostly a personality cult.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 15 2020 03:05pm)

I think Josh Hawley could be this guy. He's got it all, except perhaps for the charisma. I'm not sure though if he could survive the primary. Perhaps he'd just be crushed by a brutish "hurr durr we're gonna win so much, Murica, fuck yeah"-candidate, similar to how Trump shoved aside little Marco in 2016...


Anyway, the other point I was making is probably the more important one: what if Trump and the GOP lose, but it's far closer than anyone thought and not a rout? Imho, how the party will look back on the Trump years will depend a lot on the verdict implied by the election result. If Trump loses in a landslide and the Dems get to 53 or so seats in the Senate, the party will quickly come to an agreement that Trumpism was a horrible mistake, and that all of them were never fully behind it anyway. If Trump wins reelection (which almost definitely implies holding the Senate), Trumpism will be vindicated and the party will double down on it.

But what if it's a murky verdict? If Trump loses narrowly, and the GOP either narrowly holds or loses the Senate, there will be no clear verdict (considering the extremely unfavorable circumstances (covid, the green wave for Democrats)). In this scenario, I see an ugly and protracted intraparty civil war between those who want to go back to where the party stood under GWB/Romney and those who want to continue Trump's populist path, just without an incompetent wildcard as its standard bearer.

Quote (thundercock @ 16 Oct 2020 00:41)

That's actually my greatest fear as someone who wants the GOP to improve. A minor loss will be chalked up to "well if it wasn't for that pesky pandemic, we would have won!" and they'd double down on all the horrible shit. If that occurs, the GOP will narrowly lose every 4 years (similar to how Romney lost in 2012) until there's another realignment. I REALLY don't want that to happen because that could open the flood gates to destructive leftist policy.

Quote (thundercock @ 15 Oct 2020 18:41)

That's actually my greatest fear as someone who wants the GOP to improve. A minor loss will be chalked up to "well if it wasn't for that pesky pandemic, we would have won!" and they'd double down on all the horrible shit. If that occurs, the GOP will narrowly lose every 4 years (similar to how Romney lost in 2012) until there's another realignment. I REALLY don't want that to happen because that could open the flood gates to destructive leftist policy.

Quote (thundercock @ Oct 15 2020 06:41pm)

That's actually my greatest fear as someone who wants the GOP to improve. A minor loss will be chalked up to "well if it wasn't for that pesky pandemic, we would have won!" and they'd double down on all the horrible shit. If that occurs, the GOP will narrowly lose every 4 years (similar to how Romney lost in 2012) until there's another realignment. I REALLY don't want that to happen because that could open the flood gates to destructive leftist policy.