I’ve long tracked the split of the GOP into its three warring factions—establishment, religious right, and Tea Party. It is the split that gifted us Donald Trump, and it’s the split that will continue giving headaches to Republicans for years to come, as a new Bloomberg poll confirms.
For starters, Paul Ryan has ended up on the short end of his feud with Trump:
Republicans are in no mood to indulge anything resembling sanity, even if it comes in Ryan’s fake respectability. The Trumpian approach to Republicanism has majority support inside the GOP. And there are no signs of that abating.
Going back to our three buckets, Mike Pence (a quarter) represents the religious right, Donald Trump represents the Tea Party deplorables (a quarter), and Paul Ryan-John Kasich represents the establishment (a quarter). Ted Cruz is an odd duck, ingratiating himself with both the Tea Party and theocratic wings of his party (which is why he’ll be the GOP nominee in 2020 if Trump doesn’t run again).
Help break the GOP, donate to our slate of House candidates!
Based on these numbers and those of the primary, the numbers shake out to about 40 percent Tea Party, 30 percent religious right, and 25 percent establishment. (The last 5 percent are inconsequential libertarian types, think Ron Paul.) So what does that tell you?
But even that doesn’t fully explain the balance of power. Because while the establishment wing may be mired at 25 percent, far from any intra-party governing majority, this is the wing with all the money. It’s no accident that aside from the Koch brothers, Republican money has dried up this cycle, and what (relatively) little of it there is has gone to prop up establishment downballot Republicans.
The money wing of the party was totally fine with the theocrats and Tea Party types as long as they were doing Wall Street’s bidding. But those days are over. It is now full-fledged war.
So you have a money-establishment wing desperate to eliminate taxes and regulations that hinder its wanton pursuit of profits, yet without the popular support to do shit.
You have a religious right wing on the losing end of the culture wars, yet stubbornly refusing to surrender.
You have an ascendant Tea Party wing fueled by racism, misogyny and xenophobia, and one that explicitly rejects the traditional economic tenets of the GOP.
At the moment, the Tea Party and religious right wings have formed an alliance, but it is an uneasy one. They may hate different people (gays versus browns), but it’s close enough to paper over their differences. Thus, Trump can pretend to care about abortion and gays, and the Falwells of the GOP can pretend that … Trump cares about abortion and gays. Paul Ryan can only sit and watch from the outside.
This alliance will last through 2020, because Ted Cruz actually does care about abortion and gays, and he actually does want to blow up Washington, which gives him Tea Party cred. But what happens when the money doesn’t support those efforts (and the establishment is once again get blamed for defeat)? What happens when the Wall Street types decide to abandon the GOP and try to influence the one serious party in the country (something we’ll have to fend off)? Or best case, what happens when, blinders removed, many of those “moderate” Republicans realize that Democratic policies are objectively better for business, for their communities, for their families, for the environment, and for America? (Wishful thinking, but you never know.)
And after Hillary Clinton defeats Cruz in 2020, what then? Our party’s demographic advantages will only grow year after year, and in today’s politics, demographics are destiny. (That’s why it was so easy to call the Democratic primary despite Clinton’s significant vulnerabilities.) It’s not as if Cruz’s regressive politics will win back people of color, or even women defectors to Clinton. Absent major scandal, Clinton’s task in 2020 should be easier, despite what will then be a long strong list of Democratic presidential governorship.
So after yet another defeat, does the GOP monied class accept its defeat and move on, or does it keep fighting for control against the wishes of its base? What happens if after two crushing presidential defeats, the establishment decides that yet another post-mortem is in order, and this time, they’ll really heed its recommendations?
So let’s review the two possibilities:
1) The Tea Party/religious right coalition stays intact, the monied establishment leaves. You have a rump Republican Party with no money, and demographic support that is literally dying off.
2) The monied class wrestles control of the party, the rest leaves. You have a Republican Party with no supporters, either living or dead.
This is the dilemma they face, and it’s an insurmountable one. This is why the modern Republican Party cannot survive. It is a dead man walking. The only question is, what’s left standing after all the inevitable, coming bloodshed.
Meanwhile, on our side, we’re seeing a tolerant, ever-more-liberal Democratic Party fueled by even more tolerant and even more liberal millennial base. The future is ours, and it is bright. Now we help the process along by donating!
Here’s our slate of endorsed House candidates.
Here’s our slate of endorsed Senate candidates.
