Long before Trump, today’s GOP lost any ability to be constructive on just about anything. If something is good, they reflexively oppose it. People having healthcare? Oppose. People going to college? Oppose. Stopping gun massacres? Oppose. Renewable energy? Oppose.
Their entire policy on immigration is bigotry and hate. Their policy on the budget is to cut taxes for the wealthy. Their policy on elections is to have as few people as possible voting. Also, I’m not quite sure how a political party would be opposed to saving our environment, but here we are.
Then 2016 happened. Republicans have surrendered everything—their duty, their patriotism, and their principles—in order to pledge fealty to a man too stupid to be trusted to manage his own social media account. He remade the party in his ugly image, so now those who haven't left can largely be divided into just three groups: the rich, the racists, and the rubes. This is who they have to work with now.
Every demographic the GOP had been working on gaining has been forever lost. When the Democratic Party became the party of civil rights in the 1960s, the southern conservatives switched allegiance to the GOP, and haven’t looked back. As recently as 2012, the GOP was determined not to lose the fast growing Latinx community in the same way they lost the African-Americans, so they pandered. Even Sean Hannity argued that the GOP should go for amnesty. All of that outreach ended under Trump, who has smeared and insulted them continuously since day one.
As little as four years ago, it was unheard of to see Nazis marching alongside conservatives. Now they have become fixtures at rightwing protests and Trump rallies, and Trump openly praises them. This is partly due to the fact, whether they admit to it or not, that the GOP feels they need them. They want minority groups voting for them, but since that’s now out of reach, they have aligned ever more closely with the racists and even gave them a home in the Trump’s new party: the “alt-right”. It’s a little ironic, since the KKK came to the same conclusion about Neo-Nazis 75 years ago. Those two groups used to hate each other, with the KKK viewing Neo-Nazis as unAmerican. However, the KKK was starting to lose a ton of members, so they started working and marching together with the Nazis. Their common hatred for minorities was stronger than their differences. It’s sad to see Trump’s GOP essentially reaching the same conclusion. The GOP has become the unapologetic party of white supremacy.
The misogyny and the ethnic/religious hatred that define the republicans has turned off the younger generations. In fact, the super-majority of Millennial voters are now registered Democrats. Their participation is steadily growing. Yes, all of the milestones in their young lives have been GOP disasters: the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and the 2008 financial crisis. But they hate, hate, HATE Donald Trump. Millennials and Generation Z are growing up in a very globally connected, diverse world, so xenophobia and overt racism do not align with their values. Moreover, young voters, even Republican ones, are moving far to the left of today’s GOP on social issues.
In other words, there’s a coming GOP apocalypse. In less than a decade, the GOP as you know it will be dead. There will always be two parties in America, but I predict the two parties will be a split within the Democratic Party: one moderate and one much more progressive. Mark my words, all of AOC’s so-called “radical” ideas, such as having the same universal health coverage as every other nation, or working towards clean energy, will be considered mainstream. I envision a future where she will be considered the moderate.
I’m not the only one seeing this. The current leadership of the GOP knows this all too well, which is why they are going all in on dictatorship. That’s why establishment figures like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham have now suddenly supported Trump’s bizarre conspiracy theories about millions of undocumented immigrants voting as an excuse to make it even more difficult. They try to rig the Census. They are all on the same page with attacking the media for exposing their lies and schemes. GOP legislatures have stripped away powers bestowed to their governors when Democrats were elected in Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. My governor in Florida essentially nullified a Constitutional Amendment to restore voting rights.
They do these things because they have no choice.
All of this hand-wringing on what it’s going to take to get the GOP to turn on Trump is pointless, because there is nothing—absolutely nothing—he can do that they won’t circle the wagons on. It’s about survival. The GOP knows they are running out of time, and are not even hiding their plain contempt for democracy. They know if they lose in 2020, Donald J. Trump will likely be the last GOP president. Their last hope is to do whatever it takes, whether through dirty tricks, court stacking, voter suppression, collusion with foreign governments, or blatant authoritarianism, in order to drag Trump across the finish line so they can figure out how to stay in power just a little longer.
And it’s our job to stop them.