What Might a Post-Trump GOP Look Like?

The future of the Republican Party will remain up in the air for some time whether Donald Trump wins in November - a nightmarish thought - or goes down in ignominious defeat - a much more pleasing thought.  The bigger Trump's loss, the better the chances that the party will regain some semblance of a moral compass.  Any true change will require the exiling of Trump's principal base of support: white supremacists and evangelical Christians. Whether or not there will be much of a party left once those boils on the party are excised will remain to be seen given that so many former Republicans may be unwilling to re-associate with a party that has so strongly revealed its moral bankruptcy.  Some hope a stunning Trump loss will bring the remnants of the GOP back to its senses, yet the example here in Virginia suggests that such may well not be the case. After not winning a statewide race in eleven years, the Virginia GOP continues to nominate extremists and recently even replaced a more viable congressional incumbent with and extremist with ties to Liberty University.  A column in the New York Times looks at the possibilities.  Here are highlights:

[I]f Trump loses? Then the future of the party will be up for grabs. It’s time to start thinking about who can grab it, who should, and who will.

Much depends on the margin of defeat. If it’s razor thin and comes down to a vote-count dispute in a single state, as it did in Florida in 2000, Trump will almost surely allege fraud, claim victory and set off a constitutional crisis. As Ohio State law professor Edward Foley noted last year in a must-read law review article, a state like Pennsylvania could send competing certificates of electoral votes to Congress. Interpretive ambiguities in the 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887 could deadlock the House and the Senate. We could have two self-declared presidents on the eve of next year’s inauguration.

But let’s assume Trump loses narrowly but indisputably. In that case, the Trump family will do what it can to retain control of the G.O.P.

Tommy Hicks Jr., the current Republican National Committee co-chairman, is one possible candidate to move up to become chairman, and run the R.N.C., but the likelier choice is Hicks’s good friend Donald Trump Jr. The Trumpers will make the argument that NeverTrumpers cost them the election and are thus responsible for everything bad that might happen in a Biden administration, from crime on the streets to liberal Supreme Court picks to some future Benghazi-type episode.

Something unpleasant might come of this. It tends to happen whenever a large mass of conformists convince themselves that they’ve been betrayed by a nonconforming minority in their midst.

Then there’s the third scenario: An overwhelming and humiliating Trump defeat, on the order of George H.W. Bush’s 168 to 370 electoral vote loss to Bill Clinton in 1992.

The infighting will begin the moment Florida, North Carolina or any other must-win state for Trump is called for Joe Biden. It will pit two main camps against each other. On the right, it will be the What Were We Thinking? side of the party. On the further right, the Trump Didn’t Go Far Enough side. Think of it as a cage match between Marco Rubio and Tucker Carlson for the soul of the G.O.P.

Both sides will recognize that Trump was a uniquely incompetent executive who — as in his business dealings — always proved his own worst enemy, always squandered his luck, never learned from his mistakes, never grew in office. Both sides will want to wash their hands of the soon-to-be-former president, his obnoxious relatives, their intellectual vacuity and their self-dealing ways.

That’s where agreement ends. The What Were We Thinking? Republicans will want to hurry the party back to some version of what it was when Paul Ryan was its star. They’ll want to pretend that Trump never happened. They will organize a task force composed of former party worthies to write an election post-mortem, akin to what then-G.O.P. chair Reince Priebus did after 2012, emphasizing the need to repair relations with minorities, women and younger voters.

The Didn’t Go Far Enough camp will make the opposite case. They’ll note that Trump never built the wall, never got U.S. troops out of the Middle East, never drained the swamp of Beltway corruption, ended NAFTA in name only, did Wall Street’s bidding at Main Street’s expense, and “owned the libs” on Twitter while losing the broader battle of ideas. This camp will seek a new champion: Trump plus a brain.

These are two deeply unattractive versions of the party of Lincoln, one feckless, the other fanatical. Even so, all who care about the health of American democracy should hold their noses and hope the feckless side prevails.

As with the Democrats after Jimmy Carter’s defeat in 1980, it will probably take more than one electoral shellacking for conservative-leaning voters to appreciate the scale of disaster that Trump’s presidency inflicted on the party and the country. It will probably also take more than one defeat for the party to learn that electoral contests should still be waged, and won, near the center of the ideological spectrum, not the fringe.
But everything has to start somewhere. A decisive Trump loss in November isn’t a sufficient condition for the G.O.P. to begin to heal itself. It’s still a beginning.

We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated

Sadly, today's Republican Party resembles the Vichy French regime with Mitch McConnell playing the role of Marshal Philippe Pétain (McConnell might do well to recall Pétain's fate) and Lindsey Graham vying for some similar ignoble equivalent from the foul regime.  Yet, as in France during WWII, some French refused to yield to the fascist boot and formed the French Resistance and fought for the restoration of democracy and the defeat of Nazism.  In an editorial in the New York Times, a group of former Republicans have announced the Lincoln Project  aimed at protecting American democracy and specifically seeing that Donald Trump is defeated in 2020.  Like many, they see Trump and today's GOP as a clear and present danger that must be stopped.  Personally, I view the GOP as being past being saved since I see no way of breaking the grip the Christofascists and white supremacists now have on the party base.   Whatever, the future, the first step is defeating Trump.  Here are highlights from the Times editorial: 

Patriotism and the survival of our nation in the face of the crimes, corruption and corrosive nature of Donald Trump are a higher calling than mere politics. As Americans, we must stem the damage he and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution and the American character.

That’s why we are announcing the Lincoln Project, an effort to highlight our country’s story and values, and its people’s sacrifices and obligations. This effort transcends partisanship and is dedicated to nothing less than preservation of the principles that so many have fought for, on battlefields far from home and within their own communities.

Over these next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box and to elect those patriots who will hold the line. We do not undertake this task lightly, nor from ideological preference. We have been, and remain, broadly conservative (or classically liberal) in our politics and outlooks. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, but our shared fidelity to the Constitution dictates a common effort. The 2020 general election, by every indication, will be about persuasion, with turnout expected to be at record highs. Our efforts are aimed at persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to help ensure a victory in the Electoral College, and congressional majorities that don’t enable or abet Mr. Trump’s violations of the Constitution, even if that means Democratic control of the Senate and an expanded Democratic majority in the House.

The American presidency transcends the individuals who occupy the Oval Office. . . . Their commitment to order, civility and decency are reflected in American society.

Mr. Trump fails to meet the bar for this commitment. He has neither the moral compass nor the temperament to serve. . . . . But [Trump's] this president’s actions are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans. They have done no less than abdicate their Article I responsibilities.

Indeed, national Republicans have done far worse than simply march along to Mr. Trump’s beat. Their defense of him is imbued with an ugliness, a meanness and a willingness to attack and slander those who have shed blood for our country, who have dedicated their lives and careers to its defense and its security, and whose job is to preserve the nation’s status as a beacon of hope.

Congressional Republicans have embraced and copied Mr. Trump’s cruelty and defended and even adopted his corruption. Mr. Trump and his enablers have abandoned conservatism and longstanding Republican principles and replaced it with Trumpism, an empty faith led by a bogus prophet.

Mr. Trump and his fellow travelers daily undermine the proposition we as a people have a responsibility and an obligation to continually bend the arc of history toward justice. They mock our belief in America as something more meaningful than lines on a map.

Our peril far outstrips any past differences: It has arrived at our collective doorstep, and we believe there is no other choice. We sincerely hope, but are not optimistic, that some of those Republicans charged with sitting as jurors in a likely Senate impeachment trial will do likewise.

American men and women stand ready around the globe to defend us and our way of life. We must do right by them and ensure that the country for which they daily don their uniform deserves their protection and their sacrifice.

We look to Lincoln as our guide and inspiration. He understood the necessity of not just saving the Union, but also of knitting the nation back together spiritually as well as politically. But those wounds can be bound up only once the threat has been defeated. So, too, will our country have to knit itself back together after the scourge of Trumpism has been overcome.

I wish these individuals luck in their mission to save the country.

Keeping Trump in Office will Destroy the Republican Party

As Democrats in the House of Representatives debate what action to take in the wake of the release of the Mueller report, some are arguing that impeachment would be a foolish move and could harm Democrat prospects in 2020, especially f the party fails to nominate a viable candidate and the cultist in the Sanders camp keep their vow to vote for Trump if Bernie Sanders is not the nominee (a move, in my view, that shows they are irrational at best).  Instead, continued investigations of Trump under the guise of Congressional oversight, a constitutional duty, and allowing Trump to further alienate more and more of the populace could be the Democrats' best bet at destroying the Republican Party - or more aptly, allowing Trump and his knuckle dragging base to destroy it. For decades the GOP has had no long term plan and Trump is accelerating the GOP's self-inflicted suicide.  Here are highlights from an op-ed in the New York Times that makes this argument:

In the fall of 1998, Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff, traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with the speaker of the House. Mr. Bowles enjoyed a better relationship with Speaker Newt Gingrich than anyone in the Clinton White House, partly based on a shared Southern heritage and commitment to fiscal conservatism. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Bowles put a very direct question to Mr. Gingrich: Why were the Republicans intent on impeaching Bill Clinton? The speaker replied, “Because we can.”

Just as Speaker Gingrich did in 1998, Speaker Nancy Pelosi could direct the impeachment of President Trump because she can. Unlike in 1998, she stands on firmer ground: The Clinton case involved an egregious personal mistake and purported steps to cover it up; the Trump case involves an effort to thwart an investigation into a foreign attack on our democratic system.

Inevitably the news media and the political chattering class, of which I count myself as a card-carrying member, have focused on the party politics of impeachment. With the benefit of hindsight, impeaching President Clinton was a disaster for the Republicans. Mr. Clinton’s job approval was at a record 73 percent the month he was impeached, Democrats defied the odds and picked up seats in the midterm elections and Mr. Gingrich returned to the private sector.

Impeaching Bill Clinton was wholly a political decision; the substance mattered little in 1998. Two decades later, Democrats face almost the exact opposite dynamics.

For Democrats, leaving Donald Trump in office is not only good politics — it is the best chance for fundamental realignment of American politics in more than a generation. Mr. Trump is three years into destroying what we know as the Republican Party. Another two years just might finish it off. Trumpism has become Republicanism, and that spells electoral doom for the party.

Mr. Trump has abandoned most of the core principles that have defined Republicans for the past century. . . . What’s left of the party [GOP] is a rigid adherence to tax cuts, a social agenda that repels most younger Americans and rampant xenophobia and race-based politics that regularly interfere with the basic functioning of the federal government.

Republicans today are the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson — a coalition that, in the face of every demographic trend in America, will mean the long-term realignment of the federal government behind the Democrats.

[K]eeping President Trump in office is the best way to cement Trumpism’s hold on the Republican Party.

Republicans themselves know it, and that simple fact is a huge problem for them: By and large they don’t like him, and they know he’s a long-term problem for the party — but in the short term they know they can’t get re-elected without his voters. For Democrats, it’s the dream scenario — as long as he completes his term.

President Trump should be impeached because he is unfit for the presidency. . . . But if Newt Gingrich taught us anything, impeaching the president is likely to be bad politics.

Nothing will unite an increasingly fraying Republican Party more than trying to remove the president anywhere but at the ballot box. Democrats risk the kind of overreach that doomed the Republicans 20 years ago. And in any case Democrats are not likely to succeed in getting votes in the Senate to convict the president. And in politics, a loss is a loss — there are no moral victories.

I fully understand the historical imperative of holding the president accountable for his behavior. I also share the sentiment of so many Americans who want to punish him for what he’s done to the country. But I believe there is something bigger at stake.

Allowing Mr. Trump to lead the Republican Party, filled with sycophants and weak-willed leaders, into the next election is the greater prize. Democrats have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to realign American politics along progressive lines, very much like Ronald Reagan did for Republicans in the 1980s.

Trumpism equals Republicanism as long as Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket. And a real shift to progressivism in America will be delivered by a devastating rebuke of the president and his party, a rebuke that will return control of the Senate and state houses across the nation. Politics is always a gamble — and this is the best bet we’ve had in a long time.

The argument makes good sense. Pray that the Democrats come up with a credible 2020 presidential nominee - someone other than Warren and Sanders - and Biden.

Will There be a Youth Vote Wave?

One of the big questions that will be answered tomorrow, for good or ill, is whether or not younger voters will go the polls and reject a Republican agenda that will harm them more than anyone else in the long term.  Similar questions, of course, exists about blacks and Hispanics, two minorities targeted for harm by Republicans.  A story in the Washington Post looks at an overtly racist robo call campaign going on in Georgia:

“This is the magical Negro Oprah Winfrey asking you to make my fellow Negress Stacey Abrams the governor of Georgia,” the robo-call begins, before spewing nearly 60 seconds of racism coupled with a dash of anti-Semitism. Georgians began hearing the call last week, according to the Hill.

Younger voters are more racially diverse than the older generations and one can only hope that ads like this one cause outrage that drives them and other minorities to the polls tomorrow.  This type of overt racism is now standard fare in the Republican Party.   But back to the youth vote.  A piece in the Washington Post suggests that the youth vote turn out will likely be up significantly.  The question then remains of whether or not it will be enough to outweigh aging whites who support Republicans and Trumpism.  Here are article highlights:

Youth turnout rates in the midterm early vote are up by 125 percent compared to 2014, according to Catalist, a voter database servicing progressive organizations — an eye-popping and historically high figure, say strategists on both the left and the right.

Young Americans ages 18 to 29 who say they are definitely voting tilt leftward, according to polls. But the data also shows young Republicans are bubbling with enthusiasm headed into tomorrow.  Here are the Catalist numbers for early voting:

  An “attitudinal” shift: A recent Harvard Institute of Politics poll indicated the most dramatic shift in their polling history is young people’s attitudes about whether politics makes a tangible difference in their lives. John Della Volpe, IOP's polling director, said pollsters saw a 15-point increase post-2016. 

  Per the poll: Forty percent of 18 to 29-year-olds reported they will “definitely vote” in the midterms (54 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of Republicans and 24 percent of independents). 

  2020 implications: Among young people polled, 59 percent said they would “never” vote for President Trump vs. 11 percent who said they'd be “sure to” vote for him. 

  Narratives vs. numbers: “Almost all of the data I’ve seen from the last two Harvard polls indicate a significant increase in enthusiasm, interest and likelihood of voting for people under 30 — so the data has been consistent but the narrative inconsistent,” Della Volpe told us.

  'A big boost': “The media expectation before AVEV (Absentee Voting/Early Voting) started, based on survey responses about enthusiasm, was that young people would not be a factor again,” a Democratic strategist told Power Up. “Clearly, they’re going to be, especially if those voting are as Democratic as they survey. It’s a big boost for Democrats’ hopes.”
   GOP pollster: Chris Wilson, the CEO of WPA Intelligence, told us he thought it was a “bit too much” to call the turnout “historic.” But he said the electorate is looking younger “than both the 2016 and 2014 general elections. “Voters under 25 are outpacing their vote share from both the 2016 and 2014 general.
 The Issues: Nine months after 17 students were killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Della Volpe's firm, SocialSphere, found that school shootings are the most worrisome issue to young Americans.
 The mass shooting generation is showing up: We spoke with Jackie Corin, co-founder of March for Our Lives, who voted for the first time last week. Corin, along with a handful of her peers, has been traveling the country, meeting with lawmakers and mass shooting survivors, speaking on college campuses and visiting communities to build what the group calls a “youth infrastructure” to carry over into 2020. 

·         Get woke:  Corin says she credits the big interest to issues young people care about “behind the names on the ballots . . . You're not just voting for this candidate but for your brother who might go to a college next year in an open carry state.”  

·         Civic engagement is cool: “Activism is becoming more of a normalized activity for teenagers — they are seeing their friends get involved with campaigns and issues and it’s spreading like wildfire,” Corin added. 

·         Twitter working against Trump?: Corin also credited the spike in awareness and engagement to Trump's Twitter habits. “The president uses Twitter as main source of communication and that’s something that young people see every single day — they’re always on Twitter and Instagram so they're more engaged about what's going on.”

·         Real progress: Since the Parkland shooting that killed 17, over 60 state laws have been passed tightening gun control. “The constant mass shootings are large motivators … it’s what has activated thousands and thousands of people across this country,” Corin said.

Final thoughts: There's been a lot of talk about "waves" this election cycle — from an energized Trump resistance, to suburban women suddenly engaged against the president. We've spent less time focusing on the youth vote because it hasn't historically turned out in off-year elections. We still don't know if the shift pollsters are seeing in early voting will be reflected at the ballot box. But it's definitely something we'll be watching closely tomorrow.

I hope and pray younger voters, blacks and Hispanics turn out in high numbers and vote Democrat.  If they fail to do so, I truly worry about the future which could turn out to be something very, very ugly.