Posted on 01/09/2016 12:39:15 PM PST by Mariner
The Republican Party is facing a historic split over its fundamental principles and identity, as its once powerful establishment grapples with an eruption of class tensions, ethnic resentments and mistrust among working-class conservatives who are demanding a presidential nominee who represents their interests.
At family dinners and New Year’s parties, in conference calls and at private lunches, longtime Republicans are expressing a growing fear that the coming election could be shattering for the party, or reshape it in ways that leave it unrecognizable.
While warring party factions usually reconcile after brutal nomination fights, this race feels different, according to interviews with more than 50 Republican leaders, activists, donors and voters, from both elite circles and the grass roots.
Never have so many voters been attracted to Republican candidates like Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who are challenging core party beliefs on the economy and national security and new goals like winning over Hispanics through immigration reform. Rank-and-file conservatives, after decades of deferring to party elites, are trying to stage what is effectively a people’s coup by selecting a standard-bearer who is not the preferred candidate of wealthy donors and elected officials.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The entire problem. Obama could have done none of this without GOP support.
“While warring party factions usually reconcile after brutal nomination fights....”
After what the GOP pulled in MS to get Cochran back into the Senate, there won’t be any reconciliation here.
I started casting some 3rd party votes that year and the GOP hasn’t given me one, single reason to regret it. In fact, I only feel vindicated given what they’ve done since.
Whig Party bump for later....
Let the GOPe be afraid, very afraid.
From now on there should be an effort to always refer to Paul Ryan as a senior Pelosi staffer.
Hey, Royalty doesn't have to do that! Only commoners!
And who’s ever going to vote for the GOPers if that happens? They clearly don’t . . and won’t . . have the numbers.
They’re the ones who might want to give this some long hard thought. The Dems will never accept them, they would just use their quotes against everyone.
I would say there are three major factions: The Establishment Wing (Country Clubbers), The Trump Wing, The Conservative Wing
While there is some intermixing, some who try to have a say in more than one wing, those 3 define different fundamental principles and priorities.
The Republican Party is facing a historic split over its fundamental principles and identity ...
The Republican party has no "fundamental principles and identity" ... There may be individual Republicans, mostly recently elected, and hated by the GOP Establishment, that do have "fundamental principles", but the Republican Party itself, the establishment Republicans, absolutely do not. And that is their fundamental problem.
For Republicans, Mounting Fears of Lasting Split...
Too bad/too late. The GOP split away from their voters already. The rise of Trump and Cruz is the natural consequence of that split.
The divide was evident at a recent Greenville, S.C., gathering of bankers and lawyers, reliable Republicans who shared tea and pastries...
Had it said "beer and bratwurst" I would have taken it seriously. "Tea and pastries" tells me everything I need to know about these people. They aren't us.
In your assessment, what are the Characteristics of the Trump wing...politically? (Not the typical dumb, rude, liberal etc.)
Are there POLICY differences? Will they be able to garner a majority of GOP primary voters and/or majority in the General?
Amazing people still believe in the two-party false dichotomy.
The UNIPARTERIANS say that like it is a bad thing. I look forward to their demise.
The craziest part of where we are right now is that Trump is really exactly what the establishment has continually tried to push on us, a moderate that even Democrats like, and yet they hate him. What this reveals is that they never stood for principles of any sort. They are for their own power and control. They want someone they can control.
The other crazy part is that Trump is exactly what conservatives have said they don’t want, a moderate/social liberal, and yet they love him. This reveals that power is what they mostly want, too.
The Establishment faction and The Trump faction both try to paint the Constitutionally conservative faction as too small to win. Yet they attach themselves to fringe elements in the name of being “big tent” and/or cede long held values as “extreme” just as the left does, even though in the only real polling (done at ballot boxes) majorities still support those traditional Judeo-Christian values.
No one seems to see that a politician needs to have Constitutionally sound principles and the ability to articulate and educate, so as to persuade the public because understanding is not inherited. You have to teach it to each generation. Instead polls are taken and white flags waved everywhere necessary so long as the next poll says you are on your way to grabbing power.
The GOP is worried about conservatives in the same way the lunch money stealing bully worries about losing his victims at the end of the school year.
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