and might even help him.
Some extended excerpts from the article, “IT’S NOT RONALD REAGAN’S PARTY ANYMORE
And Mike Pence just endorsed that fact”:
Is it possible that the very act of Republicans of the Reagan and Bush eras distancing themselves from Trump could burnish the former president’s credentials as a man seeking to transform his party in a populist direction?…
Pence’s refusal to endorse hastens the GOP’s transformation into the party that Trump and Bannon had originally hoped to build eight years ago—a workers’ party that could more precisely be described as a cross-racial coalition of voters who haven’t graduated from college…
Whether or not Trump manages to win, we’re likely to see the continued evolution of the Republican base away from what Pence, Haley, and others would like it to be. As I’ve argued before, the relatively few voters who pine for a Reagan restoration aren’t going to find it in the present-day Republican Party. They might not fully find it in the Democratic Party of Joe Biden either. But at least there, they can make common cause with centrist factions open to the Reaganite mix of low taxes, liberal immigration, free trade, and hawkish internationalism combined with a civil religion of American exceptionalism. In the post-Trump GOP, such views are actively unwelcome (aside from the tax cuts).
That’s because a sizable portion of Americans who haven’t graduated from college, of whatever race or ethnicity, have different priorities—and, more and more, they form the base of the GOP…
If Trump loses in November, none of this is likely to change. The new Republican base isn’t going to reverse course and suddenly decide it loves Pence and Haley after all. The old Reaganite approach is a dead end. Instead, the party will finally begin to look seriously for a Trump successor…
No matter who Trump’s successor turns out to be, that person will be someone who speaks the language of non-college-educated voters and views the world as they do. The GOP is now a vehicle for right-wing populism.
...the old saying that "politics is a game of addition, not subtraction" is still pretty much true. Of course, in a truly authoritarian state where you suppress those who are subtracted, the saying is meaningless. Maybe that's part of what Trump et al. are shooting for.
But I don't see how it helps him with anyone else, particularly independents.
And if he loses another election, I sure don't see how that helps outside of MAGA who worship him like God.
Trump needs to improve from 2020. Every one of his educated voters who calls it quits is another voter he needs to poach from Biden or turn out.
I'm hoping Haley does something similar and Romney actually endorses Biden. Trump did poorly in the suburbs in 2020 but he can do even worse in 2024.
It has taken 4 years, but the cracks are widening, and Trump has fully plundered the GOP. It is clear that a lot of people were able to hold their noses and vote for Trump over the last eight years. They did so for mainly two reasons, they believed he could move most of their agenda forward (fiscal or social conservative) and he filled the war chests for elections. There were a lot of Republicans who could tie themselves into logical knots to still back Trump as long as he could get them enough money (and angry/scared voters) to win their next election.
Now that the Trump Crime Family has taken over the full apparatus of the GOP, the scales are starting to fall off the eyes of those willing to see that they will get no help in their down-ticket elections. Now add in the fact that even some number of Republican voters have stated they won't vote for MAGA (and it's even worse numbers for Independent voters) and it might get to the point where Trump will have to dig deep to find a VP candidate to the point that it wouldn't surprise me if he just named one of his kids as his VP candidate.