Another diarist has pointed out – correctly, I believe – that a lot will have to go wrong for Biden to lose in November. And while we Democrats will celebrate the end of Trump’s political career, there’s a critical fact we have to face: What happens to the Republican Party? Where do they go and who will lead them?
The Chinese have an adage -- 骑 虎 难 下 – “When you ride the tiger, it is impossible to dismount.”
For the past several decades, the GOP has mounted up on a lot of tigers, none of which will be happy when, post-Trump, the Republican Party tries to dismount and return to being the Republicans I grew up with – responsible, reasonable, fiscally cautious, internationalist, willing to compromise . . .
While LBJ could not have passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts without Republican support, it was Nixon whose Southern Strategy that led the GOP to trash Lincoln’s legacy in a rush to convert white supremacist Southern Democrats into white supremacist Southern Republicans. That conversion was complete with Reagan’s August 1980 speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and the GOP mounted the Southern white supremacist tiger.
Then there’s the NRA tiger, which the GOP is only to happy to ride.
The list of tigers they must get down from is long — the anti-abortion tiger that now is the anti-contraception tiger; the “great replacement theory” tiger; the reduce and kill Social Security and Medicare tiger; the “teachers are grooming your children” tiger; elections are rigged tiger . . . I could go on and on but you get the picture.
We need a healthy two-party system, maybe even more than two, but with the end of Trump, the GOP will consist of 35 – 40 percent of the electorate who are leaderless, angry, suspicious, and uncompromising. Will another Trump emerge to lead them? What about those that Trump calls “RINOs” – do they dare raise their heads out of their foxholes and try to lead the GOP out of the wasteland?
What will young Republicans do? They know nothing but today’s GOP, they think Trump is normal.
Wish I had the answers. We Democrats can do almost nothing to help them dismount. Meanwhile, I don’t see anyone in their ranks who is capable of ending their 50-year ride on the tiger.
