TRM said:
1836er said:
jamey said:
MAGA needs to become a separate party instead of pretending to be Republican. I'm done with the R party as long as MAGA controls it
I'm sorry to inform you that MAGA is the GOP now.
The vast majority of Republican voters are now MAGA, as evidenced, if by nothing else, by Donald Trump's overwhelming support against all the establishment types added together.
Every year, more and more county (and state) Republican parties are being taken over by MAGA... from the county chairs all the way down to the precinct chairs. The old guard's remaining foothold here is waning. I can promise, if Senator Cornyn were dumb enough to speak at the next Republican Party of Texas Convention he would get booed off the stage by 90% of the delegates.
With the explosion of alternative media (aided by the return of free speech to Twitter/X) and the collapse of the mainstream media (including Big Con like FoxNews), the establishment no longer controls the narrative, making it harder than ever before to get primary voters to support their establishment choices.
While the old guard is still trying to cling to power, their efforts will be in the long run futile... because the great mass of existing Republican voters aren't having it anymore... and the millions of new votes that have been added to the GOP since Trump came down the escalator are almost all MAGA. They are younger, less white, more blue collar and middle class, more likely to have finished high school or only some college, and are lower propensity voters that have never (or rarely) voted before. In other words normal people.
The old GOP dominated by older, whiter, wealthier, overly educated, high propensity voters is a thing of the past, even if the officeholders clinging to power don't/won't realize it yet, because those voters are Democrats now.
The fact that we have as many GOP establishment types still in office as we do is merely a lagging indicator, buttressed by the money from the donor class and the power of incumbency.
This is why the GOP is losing. You're throwing away the block of people that actually show up to vote.
Just an observation, but if the people who used to make decisions for the party and failed at achieving anything are now losing to people who want something different, perhaps it is the old guard who should figure out how to better address the needs of their fellow voters instead of digging in deeper.
Trump won in 16 because he united a base that gave a voice (no matter if you think he was genuine or not) to people who felt they were no longer represented by the old guard. And when those people overwhelmingly turned out to choose him as their candidate again, your answer is that what they are feeling is wrong and to get in line with the way things used to be that led to them feeling forgotten and thrown aside in the first place.
Just like how Republicans think Libertarians owe them their vote, they think the same of Trump voters. In reality, what is the old guard doing to convince Trump voters to come back? Desantis was the best candidate R's have had in decades, but he couldn't convince Trump voters to switch to him. That was your best shot. And it was true conservate best shot.
R's are now stuck with a fractured party with 4 segments - big government pro war old guard, small government cut spending conservative, MAGA populism, and libertarians.
Old guard has lost too many people to win again. Conservatives haven't been able to convince MAGA to join them. Libertarians aren't serious enough about erosion of culture to pull in other R's, and MAGA is brash and abrasive and has pissed off segments of all the others.
Somebody has to find middle ground. But that middle ground will have to be to the middle right, not the middle left, or 3 segments will keep themselves segmented.
