When it comes to the long-term health and prosperity of the Republican Party, this signal from Gallup, who I regard as a slightly right of center, is about the last thing the Party faithful should want to see:
An eleven point gap between the Democrats and the Republicans is bad. An eight point drop over six months is close to catastrophe.
Remember when the Republicans abandoned Richard Nixon? Here’s his poll numbers on the right. While they’re a poor proxy for Party Affiliation, it’s worth a guess that Americans began to leave the Republican Party in droves, too.
When Trump brags about his intra-party approval numbers, it’s wise to remember those willing to even admit to pro-Republican sympathies are rapidly shrinking. As I’ve expected, the Republican Party is rapidly becoming the Party of extremists who don’t respect the idea of democracy and its ideals, and the entire idea of liberalism which has animated the American experiment for all these decades, flawed as it has been, and that’s close to all of the membership. That’s why former Republicans are running for elective seats as Democrats.
The question then becomes: will the Republican elected officials dare to openly repudiate Trump? Outside of Senators Romney (R-UT) and Murkowski (R-AL)? Many are facing imminent defeat, and yet if they abandon ship individually, they cannot hope to persuade the independents to back them in enough numbers to win anyways – and the base, even as it shrinks more and more, will not vote for a Trump-traitor.
And if they jump ship all together, repudiating Trump en masse? My goodness, it just occurred to me that they could ask Pelosi to order a second impeachment effort, get it done in a week, and convict him in a day. That’d be ballsy. Also very entertaining.
But many of them have made it a virtue to cling to Trump knees, doing God knows what to him, in order to get nominated and elected. Even an impeachment and conviction would be ineffective for most of them, because voters remember and Democrats have advertising dollars. It might destroy the party faster than the slow, well, mildly fast disintegration we’re seeing now.
And how’s the Presidential Popularity poll amalgamation going on FiveThirtyEight?
No better than last time, and, based on the Gallup poll, it’ll not be improving substantially any time soon.
The Republicans are using a dead-end ideology paired with pathological operational processes, such as team politics, which in combination with Trumpist campaign tactics and profound governing incompetence is going to sink them – perhaps even deeper than can be imagined.
