+- Forums (http://rightwingers.org/forums)
+-- Forum: Politics and Policies (http://rightwingers.org/forums/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The Republican Party (http://rightwingers.org/forums/forum-18.html)
+--- Thread: Deep crisis (/thread-136.html)
Pages:
1
2
Deep crisis - Admin - 05-03-2016
The crisis in the Republican Party is even worse than it looks
- Josh Barro
- 1h
1. They think he will lose badly to Hillary Clinton, perhaps so badly that Republicans lose control of both houses of Congress.
2. They are afraid that he will damage the brand of the Republican Party, making it harder to win future elections.
3. They believe that he lacks the temperament and character to serve as president.
These are all good reasons to be alarmed, but there is also a fourth reason for alarm that is perhaps the most alarming of all for conservatives: His nomination could signal the death of orthodox conservatism as one of the two main forces in American public policy, since he is running away with the nomination despite being exposed as a nonconservative.
Trump is the candidate who finally figured out how to exploit the fact that much of the Republican voter base does not share the policy preferences of the Republican donor class, and that it is therefore possible to win the nomination without being saddled with their unpopular policy preferences.
He will not be the last candidate to understand this.
Future candidates will seek to rebuild Trump's coalition, and they will follow in his footsteps by opposing free trade, promising to protect entitlements from cuts, questioning the value of America's commitment to military alliances, and shrugging at social changes like the growing acceptance of transgender people.
All three of the supposed "legs" of the Republican coalition stool — libertarian economics, social conservatism, and militarism — are at risk from Trump and the populist-imitator candidates he will spawn.
But it gets worse.
It is easy to find examples of parties where ideologically orthodox members felt sold out by moderate leaders who softened party platforms. Think of Tony Blair in the UK or Dwight Eisenhower in the US.
But at least those moderate leaders tend to be broadly popular with the public, and to win elections, allowing those ideologically orthodox party members to get half a loaf in the form of implementation of a watered-down version of a party platform.
Trump has somehow found a way to throw away the ideologically extreme ideas that orthodox conservatives cared about while actually making the party less popular. His nomination is a recipe for conservatives to sell out and lose anyway.
There is a missed opportunity for the Republican Party hiding somewhere within this train wreck. Nonwhite voters are much more likely than white voters to tell pollsters that they favor a larger government providing more services, so some version of the Trump economic agenda should actually help Republicans do better with more diverse voters, who have long been turned off by Republican antigovernment rhetoric.
But because Trump has swapped out calls for Social Security privatization for overt appeals to racism, he won't be able to do that. But maybe — maybe — some future Trump imitator could find a way to keep the broadly popular parts of his platform while dropping the ones that have caused him to rack up the highest "very unfavorable" ratings of any party nominee since the start of the data in 1980.
But do not hold your breath for any faction of the Republican Party to take that lesson from their impending, devastating loss. Instead, three different factions will each have their own story of why Republicans lost the 2016 election — and each of them will be wrong.
Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz and his allies will say that the loss was the predictable result of failure to nominate a true conservative. Faced with two essentially similar candidates like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, conservatives chose to stay home. To win in 2020, they will say, Republicans must abandon moderation and the desire for "deals" and nominate a stalwart, no-compromise conservative like Cruz.
Establishment Republicans will say the problem is that the party let the clowns take over, and must return power to the adults in the room like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, instead of toxic candidates like Trump and Cruz. They will not address the problem that orthodox Republican policy prescriptions are unconvincing even to voters in the Republican primary, let alone the general electorate.
Trump and his fans will say that the Republican establishment sabotaged Trump by withholding their support, hoping they could quash his insurgency by manufacturing a wide loss to Hillary Clinton. They will not go away quietly.
This campaign has been compared to a number of television shows,including "Veep." But maybe the best comparison is "Seinfeld." After the Republicans lose, there will be no hugging and no learning. And that means the 2020 nominating campaign could be another circular firing squad similar to the one we are witnessing now.
You had better stock up on popcorn.
RE: Deep crisis - Admin - 05-13-2016
From John Boehner himself..
John Boehner just confirmed everything liberals suspected about the Republican Party
Updated by Ezra Klein on April 28, 2016, 11:20 a.m. ET @ezraklein
Speaking at Stanford University, former House Speaker John Boehner went the full Bulworth.
"You can call me boner, beaner, jackass, happy to answer to almost anything," he said. Mostly, though, the name-calling was directed outward.
Boehner called Ted Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh," and said, "I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life." He admitted he would vote for Donald Trump, if it came to it, but not for Cruz.
He repeatedly called the House Freedom Caucus — the loose group of anti-establishment conservatives who are thought to have forced him out of the speakership — "knuckleheads" and "goofballs."
"I love all these knuckleheads talking about the party of Reagan," Boehner continued. "He would be the most moderate Republican elected today."
It's easy to laugh this off. After all, didn't everyone kind of believe this is what Boehner would say after a couple of glasses of Merlot?
But don't laugh it off. John Boehner was the Speaker of the House as recently as a single year ago. He is, himself, a conservative Republican. And he is saying, flatly, that the Republican Party has been captured by morons, goofballs, and "Lucifer." He is saying that the party has moved so far to the right that Ronald Reagan wouldn't recognize it.
Boehner is validating one of the most persistent and controversial critiques of the modern Republican Party. And he has the authority to do so.
Has the Republican Party become "an insurgent outlier"?
In 2012, the congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein wrote a column for the Washington Post diagnosing what they saw to be the central problem in modern American politics.
"The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics," they wrote. "It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
"When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges."
The op-ed hit like a bomb. Mann and Ornstein were institutionalists with wide respect in both parties — Ornstein, in fact, worked (and still works) for the conservative American Enterprise Institute. For them to call out one party as "the core of the problem" in American governance was to violate all the rules of polite Washington society. Their diagnosis was controversial at the time, to put it lightly.
For the most part, Republicans dismissed the critique as motivated by the authors' personal liberalism. "The implicit premise is that Republicans are radical and partisan because they are conservative, and we’d be much better off if we returned to the days when Republicans were content to go in the direction of progressive liberalism, albeit a little bit more slowly," wrote Joseph Postell in the National Review.
The truth, he continued, is that "the authors provide very little argument that the Republicans have crossed an ideological Rubicon in any substantive way. There are a few quotes from Republican dissenters Chuck Hagel and Mike Lofgren, but that is all they offer."
In other words, for a critique like this to really have bite, it would need to come from a true, dyed-in-the-wool Republican. Someone whose loyalty to the party couldn't be questioned. Someone who clearly wanted Republicans to succeed and prosper.
Someone like John Boehner.
Boehner was an ideological conservative. The problem is he wasn't a procedural extremist.
In 2006, when House Republicans needed a leader after the fall of Tom DeLay, they turned to John Boehner. They kept him as their leader after the 2006 election, and after the 2008 election. They voted him speaker of the house after the 2010 election, and then again after the 2012 and 2014 elections.
And there was reason for that. By the time Boehner left office, he was, by definition, the establishment — you can't be third in line for the presidency and still be seen as a political outsider. But he was also a conservative. He had been one of Newt Gingrich's deputies amidst the 1994 Republican takeover, and he routinely racked up high marks from rightwing watchdogs like the American Conservative Union that tracked whether members of Congress voted in a routinely conservative fashion.
Boehner's most vicious fights with his party's right flank weren't ideological. Like them, he wanted to repeal Obamacare, cut taxes, ban abortion, and voucherize Medicare. The fights, rather, were tactical. He recognized that, without the presidency, Republicans didn't have the power to achieve those goals, and trying to force Obama's hand by shutting down the government or breaching the debt ceiling was likely to backfire. If Republicans were going to get anything done, they would need to compromise with Democrats — and it was that belief, more than any other, that offended Boehner's critics.
This is the core of Mann and Ornstein's critique, too. They were not simply arguing that the Republican Party has become more conservative, though it clearly has. They were arguing that it had become tactically extreme in ways that were grinding the normal workings of government to a halt. "Rank-and-file GOP voters endorse the strategy that the party’s elites have adopted," they wrote, "eschewing compromise to solve problems and insisting on principle, even if it leads to gridlock."
They were dismissed at the time. But now Boehner is saying the same thing. And he has more than enough credibility on this point.
Boehner was the Republican most responsible for managing the normal workings of the government. And he reserves his real venom for those who were contemptuous of those duties. Ted Cruz, specifically, is widely blamed for forcing the 2013 government shutdown — an absurd stratagem that didn't lead to the defunding of Obamacare, as Cruz had hoped, but did lead to the Republican Party registering its lowest poll numbers in history.
Boehner bailed. The problem remained.
John Boehner abruptly resigned the speakership in 2015. And so it's tempting to dismiss his testimony as sour grapes.
Tempting, but wrong.
The dysfunction that destroyed Boehner remains, and the politicians who profit from that dysfunction have only seen their standing rise. Cruz, for instance, is the closest thing the Republican establishment now has to a candidate who can stop Donald Trump (though it's doubtful that he actually can stop Donald Trump).
Boehner's successor, Paul Ryan, is both the party's great hope for the future and the leader most likely to be undone by the GOP's tactical extremism and wishful thinking. As my colleague Matt Yglesias wrote:
Quote:Ryan will be caught between a GOP whose impulse is to react to the Trump fiasco by doubling-down on purism and the cold, hard legislative math that forces him to cut deals with Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.
The upshot is that Ryan is going to end up finding himself RINOed, like John Boehner before him. Denounced as a Republican In Name Only who came to DC to betray conservatives. If that results in a font of boring, centrist, bipartisan legislation, Ryan may get the privilege of being considered an elder statesman by Beltway graybeard types. If it results in Boehner-style crises, he'll simply be universally reviled. But either way, he'll be a traitor to his base and utterly unsuited for future presidential nominations.
Zoom out, and here is the condition of the modern Republican Party. Despite significant down-ballot strength, it has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, and it looks likely to lose this one, too. The party has completely lost control of its own nominating process, and its choice now is to either elect Donald Trump, a candidate who isn't really a Republican and might be a historic disaster for the party, or risk a schism by trying to rip the nomination away from Trump amidst a contested convention. Meanwhile, John Boehner, the most powerful Republican elected official from 2008 to 2015, resigned in frustration last year and is now saying his party has been captured by idiots and zealots.
This is not a healthy political party.
RE: Deep crisis - Admin - 05-14-2016
What does it say about the present day Republican Party if a guy like Paul Ryan isn't considered sufficiently conservative..
Quote:Last Sunday, former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin delivered a warning shot to the man who ended up in that spot on the ticket four years four years after she did. House Speaker Paul Ryan, Palin said, was on his way to being “Cantored.” It was a reference to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who lost his seat in a stunning primary rebuke from conservative voters in 2014.Paul Nehlen: Ryan's challenger - Business Insider
Ryan's "political career is over but for a miracle because he has so disrespected the will of the people," she said on CNN, in a reference to Ryan's refusal to immediately support Donald Trump after he became the presumptive GOP nominee. "And as the leader of the GOP, the convention, certainly he is to remain neutral, and for him to already come out and say who he will not support is not a wise decision of his," she added.
The unification of his own party isn't the only Republican challenge Ryan is facing this election cycle. Ryan, a nine-term congressman serving Wisconsin's 1st congressional district, is also dealing with a primary opponent. Paul Nehlen, his challenger, is facing an enormous uphill battle — one poll showed him trailing by 64 points before the August 9 primary. But he has gained attention from some Trump-aligned Republicans frustrated with Ryan's refusal to get in line behind Trump. Palin and other conservative activists are throwing their support at Nehlen, for whom the former governor of Alaska said she'll do "whatever I can."
"This man is a hard-working guy, so in touch with the people," Palin said. "Paul Ryan and his ilk ... They feel so threatened at this point that their power, their prestige, their purse will be adversely affected by the change that is coming with Trump and with someone like Paul Nehlen, that they're not thinking straight right now." Nehlen, a Wisconsin businessman, is championing policy positions that are aligned with those of Trump. He pushes an anti-free-trade, tough-on-immigration, reduced-spending agenda, touting jobs he returned to the US from Mexico and Canada.
Staunchly opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, Nehlen suggested it would create a "super-national commission" among the nations that are a part of the pact. "Essentially, we would forfeit our sovereignty as a nation," Nehlen told Business Insider in a recent interview. "Stop and think about that for a minute. We would have one vote. Vietnam would have one vote. All the other countries would have one vote. Why would we level ourselves with Vietnam? It's absurd."
Nehlen also chastised Ryan for the omnibus spending package he helped to pass late last year. "He's been portrayed as a budget guru ... economics guy," Nehlen said. "What demonstrable thing has he done in his 18 years in Congress with that economics degree? Zilch. Zilch." Nehlen wasn't always staunchly opposed to the House speaker. He said he "pounded signs" and "made phone calls" for previous Ryan campaigns. That is largely still a trend back home for Ryan, who boasts one of the largest campaign war chests in the nation. He beat his last primary challenger by a massive 94% to 6% vote in 2014. His favorability among Wisconsin Republicans hovers around 70%, according to a recent poll. When just the Milwaukee media market is taken into account — which contains almost all of Ryan's district — that number inflates to nearly 80%. "The bottom line is you look at Cantor and say, 'Could it happen?' Well, I suppose it could happen," Charles Franklin, a pollster at Marquette Law School, told CNN. "But there's not the early warning signs that you look for."
RE: Deep crisis - Admin - 06-29-2016
And another brutal but well reasoned article, from no less than Moneymax, usually a place for the hard right.
Trump Dares Business to Flee Republican Party
By Francis Wilkinson | Wednesday, 29 Jun 2016 01:09 PM
Nominating a charlatan for president is the most obvious indication of the rot at the core of the Republican Party. No healthy institution would voluntarily elect Donald Trump to lead it.
The speech Trump delivered in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, attacking globalization and trade, will provide more cause for panic among Republican elites. Yet Trump's ascendance has obscured, for a time, the equally big troubles that produced him.
Balancing conflicting interests within a coalition is tough. Among Democrats, tension persists, for example, between unions and the party's supporters in global finance. Democrats have tried to mediate that conflict by, among other things, supporting free-trade agreements that include provisions specifically favored by labor. The party faces a similar struggle between labor and environmentalists, who have wildly divergent opinions about the benefits of, say, pipeline construction. Likewise, Democrats occasionally stick it to their wealthy supporters, raising their taxes. Other times, they retreat, as when they abandoned President Barack Obama's plan to tax 529 education plans.
The Republican Party doesn't mediate the conflicting interests of its constituent parts so much as yield to whichever is most adamant about a given issue. It increasingly functions as a clearinghouse for fanatics.
This is perhaps most evident in climate politics, where the party has surrendered to conspiracy theorists and science deniers in service of carbon-polluting industries.
It's also glaringly apparent in gun politics. Republicans support background checks for gun purchases at federally licensed stores, to keep firearms from felons. But they oppose background checks by private sellers online or at gun shows, with the practical effect of enabling felons to purchase guns without restraint -- obviating the law they claim to support. There is no logic at work, only obeisance to the National Rifle Association, which treats any new regulation as an existential threat.
On taxes, Republicans are in thrall to a similarly narrow band. After four decades of rising inequality, and widespread angst and resentment among even many Republicans, Speaker Paul Ryan continues to promote huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (as does Trump). Recent American history has shredded whatever intellectual pretense this policy might once have claimed. And the public opposes showering more money on the wealthy. But it doesn't matter. Rich Republicans eagerly want to keep more money. Ryan obliges.
Such tax cuts would lead to devastating deficits. But there is no Republican constituency vehemently opposed to deficits. The countervailing force is negligible.
Likewise, there is no Republican constituency devoted to expanding quality health care among the populace. There is only the party's Grover Norquist wing, which is fiercely opposed to government spending -- indeed, to government itself.
That's why Ryan's long-awaited health-care plan was never going to be an actual plan. There is no appetite for one -- just an eagerness to smite Barack Obama, symbolically if that's the best they can manage.
Special:
True to form, Ryan has offered not a health-care plan but a sketchy map of spending cuts, rendered in familiar euphemisms. His plan "empowers states" and "clears out bureaucracy" and forges a path to "saving and strengthening" Medicare. Ryan notably avoids details. (It took six years to produce even this evasion.) Numbers would make it instantly clear that there is no magical path to savings. The way to achieve his goal of dramatically reduced health-care costs is to dramatically reduce access to health care.
Immigration breaks the Republican rule on issues such as guns and climate and taxes and spending. The party's nativist wing is its most adamant, and has had the most success recently in Congress. Driven by racial animus, economic and cultural anxieties and nationalist impulses, Republican voters have found a champion in Trump. Yet Ryan, backed by pro-immigration corporations, has refused to capitulate to the restrictionists. The party is at a standstill, each side intensely distrustful of the other.
On foreign policy, Trump's condemnation of trade, and his explicit nationalism and intermittent isolationism (we'll mind our own business except when we're bombing someone back to the Stone Age), have likewise taken root among his supporters. But Ryan backs trade deals and internationalism consistent with U.S. policy over previous decades. And he doesn't seem inclined, so far, to budge on those positions.
What Ryan's two exceptions have in common, of course, is a backstop of broad corporate power, which partially blocks the Republicans' wildest pitches. It's a weak barrier. Corporate America has been unwilling to contest the fanatics on terrain that isn't essential to it, such as on guns. On selfish terrain, such as carbon emissions and tax cuts for corporations and executives, it's surely no better.
Still, corporations, however narrow and self-serving, are the only powerful moderating influence left in the party. (The herd of moderate GOP governors has been brutally culled.) Some corporations are now getting spooked. Fearing brand damage, a number of them have already bailed out of the party convention in Cleveland.
That's a direct result of Trump, of course. In his speech Tuesday, he blasted globalization in such stark terms that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce took to social media to counter him in real time. Trump hasn't just elevated the party's crudest instincts. He is alienating its most sober components, and posing a direct challenge to corporate Republicans with his improvisational populism. And he has genuine support, much of it from Republicans who want nothing to do with a corporate agenda.
Republican madness preceded Trump, and will persist after he quits the stage. The only question is whether the GOP's deepening descent into bedlam will prompt a broader reconsideration among corporate leaders. The GOP has worked for them as long as corporations dominated the party's tax and regulation policy. But despite Ryan's devotion, their standing is growing more precarious.
Extremism didn't drive corporations out of the GOP. Could Trump?
Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and domestic policy. He was previously executive editor of the Week. He was also national affairs writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.
Read more: Trump Dares Business to Flee Republican Party: Francis Wilkinson
Important: Can you afford to Retire?
RE: Deep crisis - Admin - 07-19-2016
Deep crisis indeed..
Quote:Meanwhile, the racial gulf separating Republicans from urban America was on stark display this weekend. It’s not just that Republican delegates, reflecting their party’s demographics, are almost universally white. It’s also clear that the 3,000 local volunteers the party recruited to guide delegates and journalists as they navigate the city also reflect the GOP base, racially and generationally. Though Cleveland is a heavily African American city, the guides are overwhelmingly white, and though standing on street corners offering directions is a young person’s job, the GOP official in charge of the volunteers was quoted in Sunday’s Plain Dealer that two-thirds of them are over 40. That’s today’s Republican Party.Convention: A City on Edge
RE: Deep crisis - Admin - 07-21-2016
Quote:Trump could be seen emerging from the side of the stage as Cruz abruptly wrapped up his speech and was booed off the stage.Cruz Decided To Address The RNC But Not Endorse Trump. It Did Not Go Well. | ThinkProgress
CNN reports that some of the crowd’s anger was directed at Cruz’s wife Heidi.
HEIDI CRUZ escorted out by security as crowd gets angry at Cruz for his speech. One Trump supporter shouting "Goldman Sachs!" at her
While Time reports that the Trump camp wasn’t exactly bummed to see Cruz booed off the stage.
Two sources tell me Trump team actively whipped the “boos” at the end of Cruz speech
Things got ugly between Trump and Cruz in the final months of the Republican primary. At one point Trump retweeted a meme suggesting that Cruz’s wife Heidi is unattractive. He later suggested Cruz’s dad might’ve been responsible for assassinating JFK. But through it all Cruz vowed to abide by a promise he and all the other non-Trump candidates made in the summer of 2015 and support whoever ended up winning the nomination.
During an event earlier Tuesday, Cruz indicated he’s open to another presidential run in 2020.
A happy and unified party..
RE: Deep crisis - Admin - 07-26-2016
Even conservative intellectuals are despairing, like Avik Roy:
Quote:Roy isn’t happy about this: He believes it means the Democrats will dominate national American politics for some time. But he also believes the Republican Party has lost its right to govern, because it is driven by white nationalism rather than a true commitment to equality for all Americans. “Until the conservative movement can stand up and live by that principle, it will not have the moral authority to lead the country,” he told me. This is a standard assessment among liberals, but it is frankly shocking to hear from a prominent conservative thinker. Our conversation had the air of a confessional: of Roy admitting that he and his intellectual comrades had gone wrong, had failed, had sinned.A Republican intellectual explains why the Republican Party is going to die - Vox
Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He himself was not especially racist — he believed it was wrong, on free market grounds, for the federal government to force private businesses to desegregate. But this “principled” stance identified the GOP with the pro-segregation camp in everyone’s eyes, while the Democrats under Lyndon Johnson became the champions of anti-racism. This had a double effect, Roy says. First, it forced black voters out of the GOP. Second, it invited in white racists who had previously been Democrats. Even though many Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act in Congress, the post-Goldwater party became the party of aggrieved whites.
This revisionism, according to Roy, points to a much bigger conservative delusion: They cannot admit that their party’s voters are motivated far more by white identity politics than by conservative ideals. “Conservative intellectuals, and conservative politicians, have been in kind of a bubble,” Roy says. “We’ve had this view that the voters were with us on conservatism — philosophical, economic conservatism. In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism.”
The fact is that limited government conservatism is not especially appealing to nonwhite Americans, whereas liberalism and social democracy are. The only ones for whom conservatism is a natural fit are Roy’s “cranky old white people” — and they’re dying off. Maybe Roy and company will be able to solve this problem. I hope they do. America needs a viable, intellectually serious right-of-center party. Because we now know what the alternative looks like. It’s Donald Trump.
RE: Deep crisis - Admin - 08-12-2016
Quote:The disarray is not limited to the Republican Party. Infighting also broke out within conservative media circles this week over the GOP nominee. Sean Hannity, a fervent Trump supporter and defender, along with Breitbart News, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, and Ann Coulter lashed out against what they called “establishment Republicans” who tepidly endorsed the nominee and the Republicans who refuse to support Trump, saying they would be to blame if Trump loses in November. Several right-wing media figures, including George Will, Erick Erickson, and radio host Charlie Sykes, have said they would not support Trump. National Review, a conservative publication that once called Trump “the very epitome of vulgarity,” blamed Hannity, Fox News, and conservative talk radio for the rise of Trump, saying “they have created an intellectual ghetto that no one else wants to visit.”BEDLAM: Hannity, National Review, WSJ Editor Go To War Over Donald Trump
RE: Deep crisis - Admin - 08-13-2016
A bright future ahead:
Quote:But even more Republicans say they’re pessimistic for the conservative movement. Republicans won’t be able to immediately turn to an obvious standard-bearer in 2020, like Democrats had in Clinton this cycle. That could mean another crowded, fractured GOP field in four years featuring candidates like Rubio, Cruz, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and possibly Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).Gloom sets in for GOP | TheHill
Also, the fault lines that divided the party this cycle — populist outsiders vs. the GOP establishment — will still exist after November, the Southern lawmaker said. And the groups that foment or “profit from” intraparty division, including the Freedom Caucus, Club for Growth and Heritage Action, will still be around long after Trump, the source said.
Tim Miller, a former communications director to Jeb Bush's presidential campaign who helped create the Never Trump movement, said that while Republicans could conceivably unite in opposition to Clinton, that won’t fix the party’s long-term problems. “That will help with some of the healing but it will not fix some of the long-term wounds that have been shown to divide this party,” Miller said. “Clinton will in some ways continue to exacerbate some of the worst impulses and conspiracy theories which got us Trump in the first place rather than a thorough, credible critique of her. Miller also argued that a Trump defeat might not end his influence within the GOP.
The final two standing were Cruz and Trump, that's basically all you have to know. One unbending hard-line ideologue (of which there are more, the Freedom Caucus, Club for Growth and Heritage Action are all unbending zealots), versus a loose canon who is increasingly unhinged.
Somewhere deep down, there is a decent Conservative movement possible, but the amounts of nonsense like climate denial and trickle down economics, not to mention the host of conspiracy theories and uncompromising attitude, it's not the present day Republican Party.
RE: Deep crisis - Admin - 08-15-2016
And then you have people for whom Paul Ryan isn't right-wing enough. If you think that's curious, you might have a point. Invariably, Ryan produces budget proposals consisting of large tax cuts for the rich, combined with non-specified tax reforms and spending cuts, and expects this to somehow boost growth by several percentage point that this will magically leave public finances in no worse state.
Is there any evidence for this? No. Tax cuts for the rich and corporations aren't likely to work at a time in which:
- Profits are at record high
- Corporate cash holdings are at record high
- Corporate tax as a % of GDP is barely above 2%, way down from the 1950s
- The results of economic growth have basically all grown to the rich, with wages stagnant. And this hasn't produced faster growth, it has produced slower growth.
But this guy is not sufficiently loony right-wing enough for the zealots at Breitbart, Drudge, Infowars, etc. So he had a challenger (a businessman named Nehlen). The good news is, the challenger failed miserably:
Quote:"If you look at the closed circle of Trump-boosters, high-profile Trump boosters — Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Drudge, Breitbart obviously — you could take the same language they used about Trump and they applied it to Nehlen, and that applies to both ideological and policy and their own sort of political analysis of the race," Mackowiak said. "To me, their overstatements in the Nehlen race should be a flashing yellow to anyone who wants to listen to their analysis or their predictions about Trump's political strength right now."What Paul Ryan's primary could tell us about Donald Trump and the GOP - Business Insider
So there is just a sprinkling of hope left the party won't completely disintegrate into the ugly underbelly feeding itself on a daily diet of paranoid conspiracy theories.