Is It Time For The Republican Party To Split Apart?

It seems unnecessary to me.

In 2016, this was the demographics of the National Review audience. True Conservatism was in a demographic death spiral when Trump was elected president.

Male – 81.4%
Median Age – 66 years old
Ages 15-54 – 18% of subscribers
Household Net Worth over $1 million dollars – 34.4%
Household Net Worth over $250,000 – 78.6%

A typical True Con was a male who was 66 years old and who was worth at least $250,000. A third of the audience was worth over $1 million. This was nearly five years ago when Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation were still a majority of the electorate. It has been all downhill from there.

The Dispatch:

“On the cold, windy night of March 20, 1854, 36-year-old lawyer Alvan Bovay rounded up dozens of his neighbors in Ripon, Wisconsin, and gathered them in a schoolhouse for a meeting that would change the course of American history.

It was the group’s second gathering of the month. Weeks earlier, Bovay, a member of the Whig Party, had issued a bulletin: “A meeting will be held at 6:30 o’clock this Wednesday evening at the Congregational Church in the Village of Ripon to remonstrate against the Nebraska swindle.” …

“The Republican Party has a mess on its hands—or maybe a series of messes,” Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska squarely in the classical liberalism camp, told The Dispatch earlier this month. “We’re obviously in bad shape with younger voters, we’re in bad shape with women, we’re in bad shape with suburbia and cities.” …

There was a GOP civil war. It was short. Trump won. 

The conflict has created hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of political refugees: Americans too conservative to sign up for the Democrats’ agenda but no longer able to stomach what their former party has become. …”

According to the Pew Research Center, 36% of Core Conservatives are 50 to 64 and 25% are over the age of 65. In contrast, 25% of Market Skeptic Republicans are 50 to 64 and 20% are over the age of 65. Death is one of the only certainties in life. Reagan era conservatism is dying off.

Imagine thinking that this can continue indefinitely: all the Bulwark and Dispatch posts, Lincoln Project ads and MSNBC appearances in the world can’t stop the avalanche that is coming.

Michael Medved is a young whipper-snapper compared to the average member of Congress. He is 72-years-old. This guy is also still mentally in the Thirty Glorious Years (1945-1975).

USA Today:

“For those elements of the GOP who hope to push their party in a more populist direction, there’s already a platform preamble that’s ready to go.  

“We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin,” the document declares. “Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislature, the Congress…The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced …The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind…A vast conspiracy has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once, it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism.” …

Surprisingly, the old populist resentments, once aimed squarely at railroads and banks, continue to flourish in the twentieth first century. Even more unexpected: that American populism should now make its home in the Republican Party.  

From its inception in the 1850’s, the GOP has functioned as a pro-business faction, encouraging economic expansion, and financial success, rather than deriding wealth creation as the product of nefarious conspiracies. Populist attitudes may play a role in leftist movements around the world, but they have seldom connected with the free-market emphasis of American conservatism. …

As today’s GOP seeks rejuvenating leadership in a post-Trump era, an aimless drift toward angry and outdated populism remains a conspicuous danger. Viability as a dynamic opposition party requires recognition that the term “conservative populist” remains, as always, a glaring contradiction in terms.”

It is Reaganism that is hopelessly antiquated.

There are lots of parallels between America at the end of the Gilded Age and America in 2021: a bloated oligarchy, a corrupt political class, record immigration, the depression of the 1890s, growing immiseration of the public, a gerontocracy that fought over dead issues and “waved the bloody shirt.” William Jennings Bryan took over the Democratic Party, realigned American politics and ran for president three times. The rise of populism also sent the political establishment into a full blown panic.

In retrospect, the root cause of it all was clinging to classical liberal economics which impoverished farmers and led to monopolies and extreme concentrations of wealth. Politics was transformed into a playground for the wealthy who bought all the politicians and who owned all the newspapers. Eventually, discontent with the status quo boiled over and the result was the Populist-Progressive era with big business on the side of urban middle class reformers and labor on the side of farmers and workers.

Red State:

“McConnell’s goal is to separate President Trump from his supporters as a repeat performance of his somewhat successful efforts to destroy and marginalize the Tea Party (who have never really gone away). An organized Tea Party was a direct threat to the political class and McConnell’s key backers at the US Chamber of Commerce. He was happy to reach across the aisle to undermine upstart Tea Partiers who dared to question their “betters” in Congress during the disaster for the country that was the Obama regime. And those “betters” included Establishment Republicans like McConnell, who were ready, willing, and able to make deals with Barack Obama to the detriment of Main Street Americans.

McConnell capitalized on Democrat-media attacks on the Tea Party. After beating down his own Tea Party-backed challenger in 2014, he was happy to work behind the scenes to undercut Tea Party people at every opportunity and elect “his kind of candidates” – those he could control through campaign contributions and other perks – as opposed to the limited government conservatives whom the Tea Party supported. And those senators he has helped elect and reelect over the years provide his power base and bloc support as minority (or majority) leader. McConnell and his cohort are all compromised, and thanks to President Trump, more Republican voters – and other Americans – have figured that out.

McConnell wants to use the same double-barreled strategy (direct attacks in conjunction with Democrat actions) against President Trump’s 75+ million supporters to regain Establishment Republican control of the Republican Party. Except that strategy won’t work this time for a variety of reasons …”

It didn’t work because the electorate has resorted since 2010. If anything is true, Trump has tempered the views of his own supporters. These people were either Democrats or Independents or leaned Republican until 2016. They have no interested in Mitch’s brand of Chamber of Commerce Republicanism.