Damon Linker on The Week considers it an insoluble problem:
So yes, it would be very good for the Republican Party of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, Louie Gohmert, Devin Nunes, and all the rest of them to be leveled to the ground so a wholly new party — a more reasonable, responsible, principled, and honorable party — can be built in its place.
There’s just one difficulty with the plan: It does nothing to address the root of the problem, which no one — not the minimalist Trump haters, and not the fiercest maximalists out to pummel the party’s establishment — has a clue how to solve.
That is the problem of the Republican voter.
Every one of those politicians — from Trump on down to Gohmert and Nunes and beyond — was elected by these voters. In the midst of a pandemic that has killed 160,000 in under six months and that the president shows no sign of understanding how to combat, his approval rating among Republicans remains at 91 percent. Thanks to this unshakable support, his overall approval has barely dipped below 40 percent through the nightmare of recent months and is currently creeping back up toward his norm of the past year (around 42 percent). …
Could anything change these voters — turning them, not into liberals o r progressives obviously, but into thoughtful citizens capable of engaging with reality, thinking about actual problems, and rewarding public servants who make a good-faith effort to respond to them? The honest truth is that I don’t have the slightest clue how to make it happen. Which also means that I have no idea how the United States might work its way back to having two civically responsible parties instead of just one.
Option 1 – wait until most of the current Republican base is dead, which will happen over the next 50 years. Demographically speaking, the base, including the evangelicals, is shrinking, and I think this will continue. While it’s typical for older generations to complainv about the immorality of the younger generations, it’s my belief that the younger generations observe the immorality of the older generations, and look to do better. My impression (hauling out my old person voice) of the younger generations, both from direct interactions and what I read, is that they have been discouraged from conservatism as characterized by the Republicans, and especially organized religion, by the results of same: support for Trump.
Option 2 – reality reaches up and slaps the Republican base upside the head. One of the features of our current universe is that it’s causal – each action has an opposite and equal reaction. This applies, metaphorically, to the belief systems that we harbor, if only in how those belief systems influence our physical actions. By this I mean, you may believe that angels dance on the heads of pins, but if this doesn’t influence your actions and positions, no biggie.
But if it causes you to fallaciously believe vaccines cause autism, and therefore you won’t permit vaccination of yourself and your kids, well, now you’ve put yourself and your kids at increased risk of extinction, haven’t you?
So if you are a farmer that believed Trump when he claimed that trade wars are easy to win, and now you’re an impoverished farmer on the brink of giving it all up because China and the rest of the world refused to rollover for President Trump, that’s reality slapping you upside the head and telling you to pay attention. Your belief system is seriously flawed.
Some people learn. Some people don’t. Why? For many, that’s the problem of religion – it gives people a reason to persist in flawed beliefs, because God Told Them. The difficulty, sadly, is that sometimes that “flawed belief” is actually a socially admirable belief such as Treat Everyone With Love that happens to be in a socially unwelcoming context, such as Either You’re With Us Or Against Us In Hating Those XYZers.
But we’ve seen children put in cages, the President call violent white supremacists “fine people”, and quite a few other outrages which have left reasonable Americans (read: independents as well as Democrats) discouraged and angry, but have had little effect on most of the Republican base – although, notably, the conservative share of American’s political affections has shrunk drastically over the last few months. While much of this is probably independents changing their inclinations in the face of obvious Trumpian incompetency, at least some of this will be Republican defections by Americans who’ve decided the tunnel to hell that the Republican Party is taking is intolerable to their belief systems. Indeed, some of them are previously Republican legislators who are now Democratic legislators, such as Bollier of Kansas – who is now running for the open Kansas Senate seat.
But such defections may be few enough in number not to matter.
Option 3 – God reaches down from the heavens and tells them to stop screwing around. While this seems unlikely, it might happen.
Option 4 – an existential threat arises. This may change things, as when it’s cooperate or die, people usually cooperate, and we do have a history of cooperating in the face of existential dangers.
I lean towards Option 1, but hope Option 2 occurs as well. The Gallup poll may indicate the beginnings of the Great slap upside the head phenomenon, but it’s too early to be sure.
