Does the GOP even have an alternative to Trumpism?

Thomas Veil said:
Here’s a horrible thought...

July 2023: New York State wins a conviction against Donald Trump, and he goes to jail for six years.

October 2023: Trump’s fans begin acquiring signatures to get his name on the ballot in every state.

August 2024: At the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump is formally nominated for, and again wins, the nomination.

November 2024: Donald Trump, still in prison, wins the election.

January 2025: The Oval Office sits empty because... well, you know.

Don’t say it couldn’t happen.
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Unlikely... :)
 
Thomas Veil said:
You’re making the mistake of thinking logically. Where have you been the last four years? 😏
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Look Hilary was a terrible candidate. They had a whole bunch of dirt that wasn’t just Republican fake news. For example why did Hilary do the speeches for Goldman Sachs, and why did their foundation accept donations from the Saudis?

And Americans also voted for Trump because they thought he was a businessman. When he’s bankrupt and in prison they won’t believe that.

The Democratic Party now also has a whole bunch of much better candidates than Hilary and Sanders now such as the following:
  • Pete Buttgeig
  • Kamala Harris
  • AOC
  • Stacey Abrams
  • Governor Cuomo
 
Eraserhead said:
Look Hilary was a terrible candidate. They had a whole bunch of dirt that wasn’t just Republican fake news. For example why did Hilary do the speeches for Goldman Sachs, and why did their foundation accept donations from the Saudis?

And Americans also voted for Trump because they thought he was a businessman. When he’s bankrupt and in prison they won’t believe that.

The Democratic Party now also has a whole bunch of much better candidates than Hilary and Sanders now such as the following:
  • Pete Buttgeig
  • Kamala Harris
  • AOC
  • Stacey Abrams
  • Governor Cuomo
Click to expand...
I want to believe every word you say, but consider that anyone who believed Trump was a successful businessman in 2016 and 2020 believed it because of their ability to ignore the facts. A slight increase in the amount of available facts in 2024 is not guaranteed to make a difference.

Also consider that just because the democrats have better candidates available it doesn’t guarantee that they will actually end up picking one of them as their nominee.
 
Thomas Veil said:
Well, this is a step in the right direction.

www.cnn.com

GOP lawmaker launches new PAC to reclaim Republican Party after Trump

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Sunday announced a new "movement" to push back on the Republican Party's embrace of former President Donald Trump and retire the "poisonous conspiracies and lies" that defined his administration.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com
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I listened to him on TV this morning. His heart is in the right place. It's people like him who will return the Republican Party to what it was prior to Reagan. 🤞🏻 I wish him luck and hope he can convince a few of his current caucus members that he is on the right path.
 
theSeb said:
Tired Tommy?
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The playbooks in DC are trickier than Tommy had figured. Way trickier.

But hey he's almost up to speed on the one called "I didn't happen to catch that on the news".

Tuberville should take a page from the turtle's book and just learn to give reporters "the look" or better yet do like Mitch does and smile at the floor and keep walking, while an aide hands out "the look" to inquiring media.
 
So if you take a secret vote of GOP House members --after a frank and sometimes furious four-hour closed-door meeting-- the pro-Trump contingent comes up short trying to muscle Liz Cheney out of her leadership slot as punishment for having voted in favor of Trump's 2nd impeachment.

But hey, whatever it takes. Cheney did not apologize for voting to impeach The Don and she retains her #3 slot in the Republicans' House leadership. The vote was 145 to 61 against a resolution to unseat her from the post.

www.politico.com

Cheney to keep her leadership position after tense GOP meeting

Republicans loyal to Donald Trump have condemned Liz Cheney, the only woman in GOP leadership, for her vote to impeach the former president.
www.politico.com www.politico.com

Cheney’s victory also represents a big win for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who at the start of the “family discussion” offered a full-throated defense of Cheney and made the case for her to stay in leadership — a critical boost for the Wyoming Republican.

McCarthy, who is desperate to turn the page on his party’s internal conflicts, told Republicans they need to be united to win back the House in 2022 and pleaded with his party to move on. And ousting Cheney could have had disastrous optics for the GOP, even though the party remains largely pro-Trump.
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Still sounds like it's not all smooth sailing ahead...

But McCarthy isn’t in the clear. The party is still reeling from the deadly attack on the Capitol, which has sparked a bitter battle for the future of the GOP. Trump is still promising to be a major player in the party. Cheney’s critics are still fuming. And Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) just formed a super PAC to target the pro-Trump wing of the party.
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Some have framed the debate over Cheney as a proxy war for the heart and soul of the post-Trump GOP, which has been wracked by inner turmoil since the deadly insurrection on the Capitol.

"I don't think this is about Liz Cheney. ... This is about the direction of our party, and whether or not we're going to be, you know, a minority dedicated to just one person, or we're going to be a Republican, a united Republican majority,” said Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who also backed impeachment. “That’s what we’re talking about."
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lizkat said:
So if you take a secret vote of GOP House members --after a frank and sometimes furious four-hour closed-door meeting-- the pro-Trump contingent comes up short trying to muscle Liz Cheney out of her leadership slot as punishment for having voted in favor of Trump's 2nd impeachment.

But hey, whatever it takes. Cheney did not apologize for voting to impeach The Don and she retains her #3 slot in the Republicans' House leadership. The vote was 145 to 61 against a resolution to unseat her from the post.

www.politico.com

Cheney to keep her leadership position after tense GOP meeting

Republicans loyal to Donald Trump have condemned Liz Cheney, the only woman in GOP leadership, for her vote to impeach the former president.
www.politico.com www.politico.com



Still sounds like it's not all smooth sailing ahead...
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Thanks to the rapidly spreading cancer that is Trump, the GOP doesn't have the luxury of returning to Plan A, which lead to Trump in the first place. A return to status quo sanity isn't enough of a selling point for their side.

Although less responsible for Trump (they still are to an extent), the Democrats do have the luxury of returning to Plan A, but I think they are smartly also doing a Plan A/B combo which means also incorporating more Progressive causes. They're not trying to crush or pretend the Progressives don't exist. I know it's hard to see any value to the Trump voter, especially this soon, but instead of trying to find anything palpable to sell about or to Trump voter the GOP is just lazily going with giving conspiracy theories, divisiveness, vengeance, white nationalism, and confident ignorance a pass. I admit it would be hard to find something positive about Trump and his supporters, but as somebody on the left that isn't my job.

But also other than being strategically lazy, the old guard Republicans have nothing to sell to Trump voters. "We hear you lunatics and we are going to........" Do what exactly? Do you have anything in your playbook that isn't from Trump's anger management shell game?
 
Chew Toy McCoy said:
Thanks to the rapidly spreading cancer that is Trump, the GOP doesn't have the luxury of returning to Plan A, which lead to Trump in the first place. A return to status quo sanity isn't enough of a selling point for their side.

Although less responsible for Trump (they still are to an extent), the Democrats do have the luxury of returning to Plan A, but I think they are smartly also doing a Plan A/B combo which means also incorporating more Progressive causes. They're not trying to crush or pretend the Progressives don't exist. I know it's hard to see any value to the Trump voter, especially this soon, but instead of trying to find anything palpable to sell about or to Trump voter the GOP is just lazily going with giving conspiracy theories, divisiveness, vengeance, white nationalism, and confident ignorance a pass. I admit it would be hard to find something positive about Trump and his supporters, but as somebody on the left that isn't my job.

But also other than being strategically lazy, the old guard Republicans have nothing to sell to Trump voters. "We hear you lunatics and we are going to........" Do what exactly? Do you have anything in your playbook that isn't from Trump's anger management shell game?
Click to expand...

They still do have the possibly viable option of ditching "Trump supporters" per se ---not the policy oriented ones including a lot of Evangelicals and Catholics, but the ones who are purely apologists for Trump the cult idol, the grandiose persona they'd like to be themselves, the "F U" executive at the top.

What they'd have left is what they had before Trump: people voting Republican on policy or past habitual, sometimes generational preference. Conservatives on fiscal and social issues. Blue dog Democrats. Moderate indies who in their own lives were vocal adherents to conservative fiscal policies but sometimes discreetly or even openly more liberal on social issues.

The GOP did not have enough assured votes there to keep winning elections in future, especially if they could not guarantee control of the federal judiciary. Mitch was going to work on the latter and make it the centerpiece of their fallback strategy.

But they were still reaching out to women and to Hispanics and Asians, whom they thought more drawn to major planks of the GOP rather than the Dem party. They were doing that to fairly good effect after Romney lost in 2012... and continued in 2014...

And then that jack-in-the-box Trump came down the escalator and launched the era the GOP will eventually regret. Maybe they do now? They've lost both houses of Congress and the White House and have an insurrection to their eternal discredit plus a more fissured party to show for it than they had when Boehner threw up hands and said I give up already!, plus Trump even now still making waves or threats or both.

Speaking of making waves, despite the establishment GOP hoping to regain control of the party's banner and move forward from the Trump era: two Ohio state lawmakers are introducing legislation to make June 14 (Flag Day) into... are you ready? Donald J Trump Day.

Yeah. This is the legacy the GOP has bought into, all these wacko state level pols now trying to curry favor with the Trump rally-fans, hoping to keep them on board as voters, so they can make new laws that feature suppression of voters who don't look like them, or who they figure will lean left.

The only ways the GOP can retain power going forward is via control of state legislatures with the power to write election laws and to gerrymander districts every 10 years after the national census. They're on it, even if maybe half the national GOP is at least privately on board with ditching Trump and the extremists among his supporters.

It kills me that a favorite whine of this GOP and their base is about how they are persecuted. They are the ones trying to establish whiteness and Christianity as supreme arbiters of policymaking, and the ones who like in Ohio now plan to convert Flag Day into a holiday to celebrate the most divisive president the USA has ever endured

It boggles my mind and I scoff at the very idea, yet I scoffed too when Trump first ran for office. I still scoff at the idea Marjorie Taylor Greene could become the face of the Republican Party, and yet McCarthy pulled off a parody of Solomon and split the baby last night, managing to walk out of a four hour meeting having supported both Liz Cheney AND Greene. And it's Dem fingerprints on Greene's punishment.

So I dunno. But I know the GOP is not persecuted. I fear they may end up the persecutors behind all the scoffing that people like me keep doing. I'm too old and remember too many better times to believe half of this stuff in the Trump era has even occurred. We need stronger young people to beat this back. They are more in touch with the damage that is actually going on in the USA than people my age are.
 
Maybe the alternative to Trumpism is just to include him and the GOP in more normal activities.

The rest of this post is an edit, since a video I posted turned up elsewhere...

OK i have an idea. Among the GOP's biggest problems is lack of a sense of humor. Now everyone knows there's nothing as normal as chickens crossing the road, and hardly anything funnier than related jokes.

So the Republican Party just needs to find its biggest chicken, nominate it to replace the dour old Don, then just step back and prepare to reap the best medicine there is, which is laughter.

Why did the gum cross the road? (It was stuck to the chicken's foot.)​
​
Why did the redneck cross the road? (To get a piece of the run-over chicken.)​
​
Why did the Roman chicken cross the road? (She was afraid someone would Caesar!)​
​
Why did the chicken cross the road? (Because the road was too long to walk around it?)​
​
Why did the dinosaur cross the road? (Because the chicken wasn't around yet.)​
 
Last edited:
No.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1359009913478017028/

They want this shit. They want to imagine themselves as entitled & privileged to whatever they want, and if they aren't handed it they want it bullied & taken. They hate gov't, but are rushing to occupy it to use it in the manner they chant they hate. They imagine if they have the revolution first, they can be the gov't that quashes all other revolutions afterward. It is NOT a new playbook.
 
JayMysteri0 said:
No.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1359009913478017028/

They want this shit. They want to imagine themselves as entitled & privileged to whatever they want, and if they aren't handed it they want it bullied & taken. They hate gov't, but are rushing to occupy it to use it in the manner they chant they hate. They imagine if they have the revolution first, they can be the gov't that quashes all other revolutions afterward. It is NOT a new playbook.
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This has to be a huge turn-off for many Republican voters. It’s pathetic that there are very few of them speaking against it though. They couldn’t stop complaining about how “defund the police” was going to make everybody abandon the Democratic party, and that Democrats needed to condemn BLM. However, it‘s complete silence when it comes to militant right-wing groups.
 
SuperMatt said:
This has to be a huge turn-off for many Republican voters. It’s pathetic that there are very few of them speaking against it though. They couldn’t stop complaining about how “defund the police” was going to make everybody abandon the Democratic party, and that Democrats needed to condemn BLM. However, it‘s complete silence when it comes to militant right-wing groups.
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I think that this is a very useful, telling, instructive, worthwhile - and rather damning - distinction to draw: To compare and contrast the shrill volume on their contributions to debates to "defund" the police with their deafening silence on alt-right and white supremacy threats to democracy.
 

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