The GOP has become an evil, anti-democrati, anti-patriotic (if patriotism has not been redefined as looking out for your perceived self interest of holding power) organization that depends on co-conspirators and lots of dummies at home who they can appeal to based on wedge issues while they suck the life blood out of them.
It's not like the Republican Party did not see how inevitable their chosen path forward would become, particularly from the time of Newt Gingrich forward. They walked into the need for anti-democratic maneuvering with eyes wide open, embracing also the fact that they risked eventual outright fracture of their party over the so-called "Conservative Dilemma": basically that their economic policies --siding with the wealthy-- would not only widen the wealth gap between those elites and ordinary Americans, but would eventually run into headwinds at election time.
The GOP movers and shakers always knew that their anti-tax, anti-labor and anti-regulatory stances meant to attract big business and wealthy stakeholders would not appeal to the middle class if the spotlight was on such issues. So they adopted a much sharper focus on things with more emotional bandwidth, including gun rights, anti-abortion, "law and order", with dog-whistled appeals to white supremacy and xenophobia thrown in to appeal to more southern and rural voters.
And as of the 90s, the leaders of the Republican Party became relentless in enforcing platform discipline within that party, which of course led to incessant primaries from the right as time went on. Few casual followers of American politics today may remember that Nixon and even Bush 41 were both far more progressive in terms of social contract policy than the GOP became after 1992, but it's quite true that neither of those guys could even land a spot on the presidential ballots of today's Republican Party.
What's interesting now though is the fissuring of the GOP at state party levels and sometimes versus the RNC or vis-a-vis Donald Trump. Some states' party officials have swung way right in support of Trump, and the RNC continues to try to keep the pro-Trump electorate on board even while paying lip service to "rule of law" --while having winked at Trump's big lies about election fraud in 2020.
That requirement for Republican pols and officlals to thread needles in order not just to win elections but keep the party from a formal fracture puts a whole new spin on what "conservative dilemma" translates to for 2021 and forward. I mean we're talking about a party that essentially sheds / shreds aspects of our Constitution now whenever rule of law gets in the way of their need to suppress voter rights in the interests of retaining power.
For the time being, some on the far right --ever since Trump's first impeachment-- have adopted a kind of circus attitude, i.e. "pay no mind since this whole thing is obviously just theater" because it actually helps the pro-Trump cause: to reduce interest of the citizens in taking Congress seriously. It's mind boggling to realize that elected Congress critters are thus participating in an effort to make the Presidency the sole source of American federal power.
There's been an assumption there, of course, that Republicans would retain the White House, and so maybe Trump's "president for life" jokes were never really a joke, not to Trump and certainly not to his most devoted followers. So it's no wonder the uproar when American voters turned up in enough numbers in 2020 to say "uh, no" and make it stick.
The question now, even as investigations and criminal charges continue regarding the January 6th insurrection, is whether the GOP can even find a platform to replace the cult of personality they signed up for with Donald Trump. Apparently they're not sure, since over 250 pieces of voter-suppressive legislation have been thrown into the hopper at state level since the 2020 elections. So the "conservative dilemma" continues, and the answer the GOP is coming up with so far is just to bet the house on anti-democracy and to hell with policy platforms.
I'm not at all sure American voters will sit still for this. A lot of people have had epiphanies about the role of federal government since the coronavirus landed here and got shoved under the rug by Trump in the early days. People remembered better responses to negative events in past administrations, whether the problem was financial or a matter of public health. Suddenly the idea of drowning government in the bathtub wasn't so amusing any more, even as it became apparent that Trump and the GOP before him had made strong strides in that direction... the whole idea was for nobody to be home when the phone rang at an agency. So it came to pass, but as it turns out, Americans didn't like that when it became a reality instead of a goal. Now the Dems can run the table (unless they refuse to deal with the filibuster at all), and the GOP is left to try to pick up the pieces. So far it's a waiting game to see what comes of the insurrection investigations and what Trump's legal situations will morph into as he tries to plan his own future, in or out of official Republican politics.
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