For years I’ve been suggesting the Republican Party was at risk of tearing itself to pieces as various factions, allergic to compromise, become more and more inclined towards orthodoxies peculiar to themselves, and of more and more absolute formulations.
Now I see far-right pundit Erick Erickson has come to the same conclusion. From Wednesday:
The reality is that the GOP as a national party is dead. It is now a conglomeration of several regional parties. In parts of the country, Republicans must run wrapped in the MAGA label as Donald Trump candidates. In other parts of the country, they must run as far from Trump as possible. That renders the GOP a regional party of divergent views that must then assemble a coalition of disparate and often incompatible values.
At some point there may be a great rip as the MAGAs go one way, the evangelicals go another, etc, or, if the moderates have enough leverage, a great expelling of the extremists. Given the toxic culture of the GOP that advantages the extremists, the latter seems unlikely, but not impossible. Enough failures, blunders, tugs of war, and Pyrrhic victories like Dobbs, and disillusioned conservatives will gulp down their misery and not vote, or find conservative Democrats who are acceptable.
We may even see conservative Democrats break away to join with moderate Republicans and form a new party.
And the Grand Old Party will slowly fade away, as relying on ideological adherence, to the disdain of experience, competency, and the ability to compromise, leads inevitably to arrogant personalities such as Greene, Gaetz, and Johnson being in charge, who can do performative morality in front of the cameras, but are vastly incompetent at real governance.
Everyone hold their breath. Or is that plural?
