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 ...
We’ve been split for the last two Presidential elections. Took them a while to figure this out.
As Mad magazine used to joke: Who me Care?
If they fold up and disappear next year, it will be a good thing!
The evolution of political movements and parties is interesting to study. A strain of progressivism existed in the Republican party from the beginning and it took over the party in the Lincoln, Grant and Roosevelt administrations. Taft, Harding and Coolidge represented the Conservative wing of the party after Teddy before Hoover took the party left again.
Robert Taft represented the right in the forties and fifties but he wasn’t the Conservative that would come later. Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Bush I, Dole, Bush II, McCain and Romney were all eastern internationalist hawks but most were weak domestically. I think it says a lot that George W. Bush was probably the most Conservative of that group.
If Trump gets the nomination he will be another of those eastern establishment types and I expect would resemble Nixon or Ford if elected.
I haven’t even mentioned the radical middle. George Wallace, John Anderson, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan and now Trump all seemed to have appealed to the same group of voters. They may appear to be conservative on some issues and moderate or even liberal on others. Dig deep enough on a Trump supporter and you’ll find a Perotista.
Mounting fear for the gop.
Mounting joy for conservatives.
Agreed! We need a HUGH shakeup!
The author writes that as if he thinks it's a bad thing.
And it will be permanent unless/until the GOPe idiots come to understand just who it is they work for. And it ain’t the wealthy country clubber donors.
I’ll give them a hint. It’s three very simple words printed very LARGE, that begins the Preamble to the Constitution.
I split from that Party a long time ago. If they don’t move back to the fundamentals of conservatism then it will in deed be a long-lasting split.
Cruz/Trump = 45 state landslide
The GOPe will be left on the ash heap of history.
My fear is the split of the Republican party will preclude any chance for conservative candidates and promise Democrat dominance for generations to come.
Yes.
I want to see the GOP Establishment CRUSHED out of existence. They are the worst sort of back-stabbing scum-sucking traitorous hacks. Preibus and his cohorts are going to be floored come November- they really have no idea of the magnitude of the tsunami that is welling up to drown them.
With Trump you get a wall. No wall then he loses all support and is one termer then Cruz comes in and fills the void. He builds the wall then he gets 2 terms. Still Cruz comes after. It is win win.
And should Cruz end up on SCOTUS, he’s there for life.
Salivating.
You are right with that. I stand corrected on my group combining. I hesitated to mix the establishment with the Trump supporters because they hate each other so much. Truth is they do very much mix. The difference is they are vying for the same power, so they must be enemies whether they are much alike or not.
In your posts I read a very intellectual mind. You sound like a teacher of some sort.
The republican party is not my grandfather’s republican party. There’s no split. It’s that the “leaders” have changed the party itself.
“We” have been trying to change the gop for a long time. It can’t be done when the press and big money is on their side just as much as they’re on the democrats’ side.
DEATH TO THE GOPe!
DEATH TO THE UNIPARTY!
(But I repeat myself...)
“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.”
They got that right.
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