Article in The Atlantic today argues this won’t hurt Trump,
by IAND75 (2024-03-19 15:16:57)

In reply to: Sen. Todd Young of Indiana will not vote for Trump  posted by sprack

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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.




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