Retire all that GOP swag. It’s officially the Trump Party now.
by digby
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| Not a photoshop. It’s from the 2016 RNC. |
Joan McCarter at Daily Kos shares the news that the GOP is now officially dead.
It’s official: The Republican Party is now the Trump Party. There’s no running away from him now for Republicans in 2020.
The Trump campaign is getting ready to “roll out an unprecedented structure for his 2020 reelection” which entail swallowing up the Republican National Committee to make it part of one entity—Trump’s. This is the first time a president from either party has officially taken over the parallel organization of the party for a campaign. They traditionally have final say on party officials and many of the aspects of the national campaign conducted by the party organs, but the national committees have always maintained a separate structure.
Not anymore, not for Republicans, anyway. They say that the “goal is to create a single, seamless organization that moves quickly, saves resources, and—perhaps most crucially—minimizes staff overlap and the kind of infighting that marked the 2016 relationship between the Trump campaign and the party.” Also, they say, it will give Republicans and “organizational advantage” over Democrats, who are going to have a robust and probably contentious primary, because they always are.
This is going to make it much more difficult for any potential challenger to Trump, provided he’s still around to be running for reelection in 2020. For that, it’s getting blasted (indirectly) by the one guy who is talking out loud about primarying Trump. Ohio Gov. John Kasich delegated his statement to adviser John Weaver, who says “There are some people who choose for whatever reason to handcuff themselves to the Titanic,. […] Why, I have no idea.”
Isn’t that a question for the ages?
Personally, I think they like it. They are authoritarian by nature and having a cult leader to whom they can submit is a very comfortable fit. They don’t care what he says or does. It’s not about that. It’s about winning and being in charge. They don’t have to be responsible for anything. They are quite happy only following orders.
As long as he wins they will follow him. When he loses, they will say he was never a Real Conservative anyway. (Remember: conservatism can never fail it can only be failed.) And then they will regroup in the wilderness, the wingnut welfare groups will make even more money and they’ll start all over again.
The real question is whether the other side will have finally shed their own fear of the cult and learned that the authoritarian right has no principles and care about nothing but winning. That’s been true for a long time. Many of us have been screaming to the heavens about it for a very long time. But now it’s even obvious to the media that the right is not an ideological movement. It’s a warlike tribe. Until they find a way to reconstruct themselves as something else, it must be understood that compromise has no real meaning beyond doing whatever is possible to advance your goals. It is not possible to deal with them in their current iteration as if they are good faith actors because they aren’t.
They aren’t even acting in good faith toward their own voters:
The South Carolina Republican Party could cancel its marquee presidential nominating contest in 2020 in a move to protect President Trump from any primary challengers.
Drew McKissick, chairman of the South Carolina GOP, said he doesn’t anticipate Trump would face a primary challenge and emphasized that the state party executive committee hasn’t held any formal discussions about the contest, dubbed “first in the South” and usually third on the presidential nominating calendar. But McKissick would pointedly not rule out canceling the primary, indicating that that would be his preference.
“We have complete autonomy and flexibility in either direction,” McKissick told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “Considering the fact that the entire party supports the president, we’ll end up doing what’s in the president’s best interest.”
It’s a cult, not a party. And when Trump is finally purged as he will be, they will try to simply carry on as if it never happened. It’s up to us to ensure the Democrats don’t let them get away with it. They’ve been getting crazier and crazier for three decades and it’s long past time to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
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