Republicans need to pick up only one seat in next year's midterms to win back the majority, but the GOP could be mired in a protracted civil war over the former president's role in the party.
www.politico.com
It's hard to imagine things settling down in the GQP, and that was
before Trump's recent wild tantrum directed at Mitch McConnell -- which (no one seems to be pointing out) had pretty much nothing to do with McConnell's speech after the trial.
So, what will 2022 look like? Will we see rough inter-party primaries from coast to coast, even where long-standing Republican congressmen are established -- one more traditional Republican, and one Trump-approved Qandidate? How many of those Trump qandidates will win? And if so, how will they do in their general elections?
Further, do we know yet what 2024 will look like? What if the Trump-approved candidates either win or get wiped out? Will that change the dynamic for the party in 2024?
Never a dull moment. All we can do is watch and guess. What do you think may happen?
I would say before the events that followed after the November 2020 election, Republicans had a good chance of making gains and taking back the House and possibly increasing their numbers in the Senate in 2022. For some odd reason, the down ballot Republicans in the Senate survived and they even picked up seats in the House. Then, Trump lost the election, screamed fraud for two months and proceeded to carve a path of destruction that would have made Sherman envious. He costs the Republican party the Senate (GA runoffs) and then two months of his legal and tweeting temper tantrums and spreading of the conspiracy theory manure results in a violent insurrection at the Capitol where he goads in followers to attempt to take the election by force. That effectively wipes out all the momentum that came from November 3rd.
Right now, I don't see any short term hope for the Republican party. Let's set aside that the present iteration of "conservatism" that Republicans have espoused for the last four decades has been a complete failure (policy wise) and has only survived because they've gotten rust belt and southern voters to vote against their own best interests. Now, they've let a carnival barker split them in half. Allowed him to run amok, set the narrative and bolster it with constant conspiracy theories and playing upon more than three decades of perceived grievances. They are slowly driving the moderates away. There will be a lot of people who voted for Trump that will be turned off by the extremism too. Put that together and neither Trump nor the Republicans have enough of a majority to overcome the Democrats.
Now I realize that Democrats are perfectly capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory but I think this time, they'll get a big assist from Republicans. Mitch can try to "ignore" Trump all he wants. It ain't gonna happen. Trump is a force of being. The only way he'll be silenced is if he goes to prison. Personally, I think the destruction of the Republican party is long overdue. Ever since that serial philanderer Newt Gingrich and his Republican Revolution breezed into town in 1994, it's been a long, slow downhill slide into the loony bin for Republicans. I'm going to sit back and enjoy the crash.
