I have to take off my blue Democratic Party team jersey to answer this question well, so I’m doing that.
Any obituary for the Republican Party written in 2016 would have to start out by invoking Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain): “Rumors of the Republican Party’s death have been greatly exaggerated.”
The Republican Party as we know it is a network of 56 affiliated state & territory-level organizations that work to get people affiliated with it elected to public office, associated legislative caucuses in both chambers of the U.S. Congress & every state legislature with a partisan structure, and a coalition of “right wing” voters who bring a range of factional interests. The coalition is largely held together by mutually acceptable positions that:
- Federal, state, and local government institutions should have a very limited role in business and commercial activity. Regulations should be minimal. Local solutions are generally preferable to national solutions.
- The United States should be assertive in global affairs and ready to use its military dominance in service of its interests.
- Citizens of the United States should assimilate and conform to the cultural paradigm of the majority of the population. Specifically: Northwest European, Protestant Christian, complementarian, heteronormative, patriarchal, and English-speaking.
As of the writing of this answer, Republican Party affiliated officeholders control the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, 31 out of 50 state governorships, and 30 out of 50 state legislatures (with split control in another 7 bicameral legislatures). Out of a combined 7,270 state senators & state representatives in state legislatures, 4,112 (56.5%) are Republicans.
They are a robustly strong party. Donald Trump may cost the Republican Party control of the Presidency and may cost them control of the U.S. Senate… but then again, maybe he won’t. Until all of the ballots are counted and all of the lawsuits are litigated, he could win. Then again, maybe he’s already cost the Republican Party the presidency since his ever-changing combination of stances make him unrecognizable as any sort of candidate that we would’ve called “Republican” as recently as 2014. While he has stood by the assimilationist pillar to the point of stoking xenophobia, nativism, and bigotry, he has been unconvincing to the other pillars that make the voting coalition work. After the dust settles (assuming that the dust doesn’t wind up being nuclear fallout set off by President Trump’s itchy trigger finger), the Republican factions are still fairly tightly bound together since – if for no other reason – there’s really no where else those voters can all go and still win elections.
The Republican Party survived the electoral shellacking of Barry Goldwater. It survived the shameful disgrace of Richard Nixon. It will survive the violent & dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump.
(Unless he wins the election and starts a nuclear war, in which case the survival of everyone and everything is in question. And the fact that me making that statement – in this instance – is actually anything more than partisan hyperbole scares me tremendously.)
Read other answers by Ian McCullough on Quora:
- What motivates a female (or any minority, really) to vote Republican? Why would someone vote for a party so strongly committed against her best interests?
- Do conservatives and libertarians promote the concept of 'survival of the fittest' by stating that everyone has to rely only on themselves and not on others? How?
- How has Donald Trump sustained his popularity for so long in the Republican Primary campaign?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2fEkr4P
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