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In reply to the discussion: o please o please o please o please o please o please o please o please o please o please o... [View all]jeff47
(26,549 posts)And those 5M voters stayed home because the party was already too far right.
The good outcome:
Republicans dump the religiously insane, go back to being a rational center-right party. Politics returns to what we had for most of the 20th century.
The bad outcome:
Republicans embrace the religiously insane, and Democrats move right to pick up the disaffected former Republicans. Results in a dominant right-wing Democratic party, for a time. Republicans can't get enough votes to be relevant outside the deep south.
But the left is completely out-in-the-cold until a new party rises to represent them (be it completely new, or an existing left-of-center party). But it's going to take some time for that left-of-center party to gain enough traction to have power. Meaning the country will drift even further right until that party can try to yank it back to the left. Eventually, the Democrats replace the Republicans on the right, and the new party replaces the Democrats on the left....if everything goes well.
The problem is as the newly-right Democratic party loses votes to the many left parties. That could give an opening for the rump Republican party to win, resulting in a massive lurch to the right. See: Germany, 1930s.
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