Are Republicans Hurtling Towards Defeat in 2024?

Back when I was active in the Republican Party well over two decades ago I continually heard it said by party leaders and elected officials that the purpose of political parties was to elect candidates and win elections.  Often, this meant dropping one's favorite candidate for one that was deemed more electable and most certainly meant that one did not immerse themselves in a cult-like following of a candidate who looked unable to win in a general election.  Indeed, primaries were meant to select the most electable standard bearers for the party in the upcoming elections.  That, however, was in the days before the Republican Party base was taken over by evangelicals and other right wing religious fanatics and white supremacists and before Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, and its imitators had created a fact free  bubble detached from objective reality - an alternate universe, if you will - where lies and untruths were knowingly peddled to viewers who tuned into hear what they wanted to hear parroted to them regardless how detached from reality it might be.  The ultimate result is that the Republican Party is now a sectarian cult to Donald Trump and others who lie incessantly rather than offend the hatreds and prejudices of the party base.  As we move towards 2024, one can only hope the GOP is setting itself up for electoral disaster.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the current situation:

For years now, some Republicans — and, to a large extent, the mainstream media — have harbored the notion that the GOP eventually would come to its senses. Surely, it would eventually dump the unhinged, disloyal, undemocratic and unfit Donald Trump, right?

But if Republicans did not wake from their slumber after the first impeachment or the second, after a jury decided he had lied about sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll, after an indictment accusing him of obstruction and violating the Espionage Act (set out in shocking detail), and after replete evidence of his alleged role in an attempted coup, it is hard to imagine what would bring them to their senses. There is scant evidence that Trump would flee the race to focus on his legal defense; to the contrary, the worse his legal position, the more desperate he becomes to regain power.

Elected Republicans and right-wing media figures have contributed to the predicament as they have minimized, rationalized and denied jaw-dropping allegations against Trump. They have made it easy for Republicans to cling to Trump.

This is what results when a party, its pundit class and millions of followers cut themselves off from reality, fall into a world of paranoid conspiracies and refuse to simply acknowledge they were very, very wrong to side with him.

And, frankly, the mainstream media has made it that much easier for cowardly Republicans to stick with Trump. Rather than challenge Republicans at every turn to defend their embrace of Trump or even to examine seriously the historical origins of toxic racist, xenophobic and delusional beliefs, the mainstream media largely sticks to horserace politics. (How disagreeable to grapple with the deep pathology in American politics and abandon false equivalence between the parties.)

Before going down the road to political doom, Republicans should understand how refusing to jettison Trump as their standard-bearer would play out. The so-called E. Jean Carroll II trial is scheduled for January. The Manhattan criminal trial is set for March, but even a conviction there might not move the GOP primary electorate. (Trivial! Set up!) The Mar-a-Lago documents case won’t begin before May. (All are subject to delay.) Meanwhile, the GOP presidential primary will have gotten underway in January and will run through March. Republicans might crown a presumptive winner by early May (as happened in 2016), even before the Mar-a-Lago trial concludes.

Without verdicts in the Jan. 6 cases and with appeals pending in any others (e.g., New York, Florida), the chances that a Republican National Convention in July filled with Trump-pledged delegates experiencing a spasm of buyer’s remorse (and overturning the primary winner) are slight. (Think of that being as probable as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy growing a spine or the party rediscovering the charms of moderate governors).

The GOP could very well be saddled with a nominee who has been indicted multiple times and perhaps convicted more than once. They would be betting that millions of voters who didn’t vote for him last time would vote for an indicted or possibly convicted nominee who spends most of his time railing about his plight.

And, keep in mind, even without the legal baggage, Trump would face an uphill climb to match his 2016 results. . . . . “between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2010s) voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people.” Put differently, the 2024 electorate will be younger and more Democratic — by a lot — than the electorate that chose Trump in 2016. The GOP will be pleading with a less Trump-friendly electorate to ignore his alleged crime spree and reelect the Jan. 6 instigator.

Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that, barring an epiphany, the GOP’s self-delusion is risking a political wipeout that will take out more than its disastrous nominee. And it won’t be able to claim it wasn’t warned.