Another Op-Ed on the danger ex-President Donald Trump could inflict on the Republicans…..
Trump’s foes are right to fear a repeat of 2016, but they’re thinking too small. There are so many other ways the primary could turn out badly for them.
Here are four completely speculative doomsday scenarios. None of them are likely. But they illustrate how the GOP’s problems go far beyond the potential for a divided field.
Trump has never been a loyal Republican. He spent years registered as a Democrat and flirted with a presidential run on the ticket of Ross Perot’s Reform Party in 2000. During the 2016 primary, he threatened to run as a third-party candidate if he lost the GOP nomination….
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Most anti-Trump Republicans are worried about repeating 2016. But if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fades, the 2012 primary could repeat itself instead.
In that race, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had roughly 35 percent of the party behind him. A gaggle of flawed conservative candidates saw these numbers and thought Romney was beatable — so one by one, they emerged to challenge him….
Pull it all down Don
It’s past time to destroy this trash party!
The Federalists had their day and won the Presidency and Congress; the Whigs had their day and won the Presidency and Congress; the Republicans had their day and won the Presidency and Congress;…..
Who knows? The differences within the GOP have become larger than realism might have dictated but they don’t rise anywhere near the slavery issue that split both the Democrats and the Whigs in the 1850’s, or for that matter, civil rights and segregation which threatened a Democratic Party schism from the 1940’s to about 1970 (cf. the States Rights Dixiecrats and the American Independent Party).
Although as a liberal-progressive-socialist Democrat, I would like to see Republicans retreat from the scene for a while (as in 1933 to 1945) to allow more of the left-liberal-labor agenda to pass, I see current differences among Republicans as closer to the short-lived Progressive Party breakaways from the two major parties in 1912-16, 1924 and 1948-52.
(However, the Progressives’ split from the GOP likely cost Taft the Presidency in 1912, and George Wallace’s split very likely cost Humphrey the White House in 1968; on the other hand, Truman while in office survived two secessions in 1948 and Coolidge had little difficulty keeping his job in 1924 despite Bob La Follette’s opposition.)
The results of the GOPer political knife fight will be entertaining thru 2023-2024…..
But again?
Toooo far to the Right locks them pit of the general election for President…..