Great piece in The Atlantic on the post-Trump future of the GOP

[quote]Yoni Appelbaum

Any relation to Binyamin?

Civil War was our past, Civil War is our present, and Civil War will be our future.

Wikipedia says they are brothers R1 -- I did not know that.

It seems his parents are not Israeli but rather an American Jewish psychiatrist and his WASP-convert author wife.

OP, wasn't this the GOP's plan pre-trump? It's hard to remember with all the daily blasts of bullshit over the last three years, but it seems the GOP's plan was to try and woo Hispanic voters.

yup, r4, Reince Priebus wrote a whole little "autopsy" about it. Then the Republican voters said, nope, we're good with the racism and the crazy.

r5 To be fair, that little revolt now gave them the federal judiciary for the next forty years, so it worked.

[quote]center-right

That has not described the Republican party since Reagan.

40 years that party's been seeking the establishment of a religious state and robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

Nothing center about whatever will be left when Orange fades to black.

Why would the GOP want to restore democracy when destroying it is the key to their success? What sort of idiocy takes the premise that the GOP needs to be brought back to relevance when they're busy crushing our bones?

Sorry - I made it through a couple of paragraphs and it was too much 'both sides do it' bullshit for me to swallow.

Republicans have been at war with Democrats - demonized them, called them socialists, unpatriotic, and want to destroy society.

Dems have called things out as they are. Republicans have been anti-social, racist traitors to the American people. We see them as animals because these lying, cheating bastards routinely act that way.

So sick of this shit - the polarization of the country started and is perpetuated by Republicans alone.

[quote] the post-Trump center-right will need to abandon its identity politics

The RIGHT needs to abandon identity politics?? Hilarious.

yeah, I have to say, as I was reading it r9 I kept wondering, WHY the Republican Party is worth preserving? What does it stand for that is worth standing for? More money for the rich? Well fuck em, the rich have enough. More denial of climate change? No, that's just stupidity. More randomly blowing shit up in the Middle East? More guns for assholes and maniacs? No thank you. To save us from the horrors of pot smoking? Seriously, is there any Republican policy that isn't stupid other than the ones they are "borrowing" from smarter Democrats?

Is there anything the Republicans stand for, even the noncrazies, that is actually worthwhile and is not also shared by Democrats? What the hell is the use of the Republican Party these days? What does the (largely imaginary) Center Right want that the rest of us should also want?

Because in a democracy you need two parties (at least) to represent the different sides

What he is suggesting is not the GOP as it is today but a party of the center-right that runs in opposition to a party on the left.

And he explains that is because center-right parties generally include people who have or who once had some sort of economic and political power

That could mean the Centrist Democrats (Biden-Obama-Clinton types) versus the Leftist Democrats (Sanders-Warren)

But we can't just have one party

Well, Dems are essentially center-right nowadays. They're hardly the leftists that Republicans paint them out to be.

The old Republicans from the 60's and 70's - hell, even Reagan would be kicked out of the party.

R12 - agree, but the Republican party is not a party. It's not a balancing agent - it's a corrupt cabal of unethical people who will never work with Dems just on principle.

They do not work for the people. They are irrational and implacable. They are never satisfied unless they get 100% of things their way at all times.

Parties change R13

Just the names remain the same.

The Democrats were the party of Jim Crow and ending Reconstruction and restoring the whites to power.

The GOP was the party of Lincoln and started life as a fairly radical party that wanted to end slavery.

The Democrats were still the party of anti-immigrant Wilson until Al Smith and then FDR made them the party of immigrants and (newly enfranchised) women.

What Appelbaum is saying is that the GOP will need to shape-shift again to ever be relevant. That means getting rid of all or most of the current party establishment

[quote]Dems are essentially center-right nowadays

Just stop. You embarrass yourself.

YMF, Ameican politics is no longer sane enough to understand democracy. Republicans will never be happy until there is only one party, and Democrats will never be happy until there is only one party. Trying to convince Americans that we need multiple parties in order for a democracy to work will fall on deaf ears. The elephant will not be happy until it lives in a world populated only by elephants, just as the donkey will not be happy until it lives in a world populated only by elephants.

Americans hate opposition.

Fuck, I meant to say the donkey won't be happy until it lives in a world populated only by donkeys. You get what I mean.

actually, YMF, parties die and then new parties form. The Federalists and the Whigs are about as useful as the Republican Party these days. What would probably happen, maybe after a fairly productive and useful period when Democrats solved some actual real world problems, is that they would then split, and the more conservative Democrats would form a new party. I think the GOP has just become such a gang of thieves and whores that they have outlived their usefullness.

Actually R18, that was something that happened in the early days of the American experiment, but since the Civil War, the current parties have just shape-shifted, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly.

Remember that the South was a Democratic stronghold until 40 years ago and that there were plenty of socially liberal Republicans in the Northeast like Jacob Javits.

Easier to keep the name, they already have the URLs, lol

and I get all that YMF, I do know that, but at this point the GOP has pretty much lost any focus other than hey, let's be the party of the Rich and let's also use racism and general stupidity to keep going with our scam about being the party of the rich.

Let's just stop this. Let's just let them go the way of the Whigs, or maybe more appropriately, the Know Nothing Party. They have nothing to offer the country at this point. That doesn't mean that conservatives have nothing to say, but they are going to have to join the Democratic Party first. Then they can do what Democrats have always done, and say hey there are some limitations to all this leftism, but at least we are tethered to reality.