Last edited Sun Oct 9, 2016, 10:24 AM - Edit history (2)
If the Republican voter base hadn't been offered Trump to appeal to their even baser instincts, that's the kind of Republican nominee we would have gotten this year. Even the so-called "moderates", like Romney supposedly was in the last election, are extremists.
Given the horrid smear campaign that's been over twenty years in the making against Hillary Clinton, she'd have had an even tougher fight against a Republican like Cruz or Pence, regardless of how far out of whack extreme conservatism is, on an issue-by-issue basis, with the American electorate. The American public unfortunately has an amazing ability to tune out and normalize how extreme the Republican party has become.
Trump will probably fracture the Republican party in the short term, but I don't think they have to ability the re-coalesce around anything else besides hyper-conservatism. Despite the wreck this presidential election is causing the Republican party for the moment, and the demographic changes that are against them in the long term, you can't deny how successful the hyper conservative formula has been for Republicans for keeping control of Congress, governorships, and state legislatures all around the country.
I think hyper-conservatism will have to suffer several years of electoral defeat before a more sane and moderate Republican party emerges.
I do consider it possible, though only remotely, that the current stresses will break the Republican party into two distinct parties, of which one or neither will inherit the "Republican" label. In the latter case, the Republican party per se will have died. But the dust will settle eventually to form an opposition party to the Democrats, whatever that party is called, and it will still take some time and a string of defeats for there to be much hope that it will be a moderate version of conservatism.
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