Is This the Republican Crack-Up?

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Many on the progressive side are fairly slavering at the spectacle of Republicans performing a masochistic ritual usually reserved for Democrats—the circular firing squad.

In one ring of the circus, Trump will speak at a Georgia rally tonight. His narcissistic words, on net, are more likely to dissuade voters from coming out to back the two GOP candidates, on whose success Senate control hinges, than to increase their support.

Then tomorrow, as a sequel, Senate Republicans will fracture bitterly and publicly over an Electoral College challenge that is purely for show.

So, will the GOP, as an unstable coalition of diehard ethno-nationalists and mainstream corporations, finally begin flying apart, amid personal rivalries to succeed Trump and the new stresses on hidden fissures?

I would not bet the farm on it. The long-term infrastructure, including the Koch brothers, and the improbable coalition between the business elite and the gun-toting, God-loving party base, is all too intact. Once Biden is elected, the Republicans will revert to their unified opposition to anything the Democrats propose.

We’ve been publishing pieces prematurely heralding the coming conservative crack-up (a cover line more than 20 years ago) almost as long as the Prospect has been publishing.

The crack-up was going to be based on a combination of inexorable demographic changes plus the contradictions in the Republican coalition.

Sorry, but that is not going to happen anytime soon. As 2020 showed, the American ethnic patchwork quilt does not vote as a progressive bloc.

If we ever beat these people, it will depend mostly on what our side does right, not on their missteps or mishaps.

A second Trump administration will cement a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court for a generation, and put our collective future in the hands of someone who will be virtually unchecked by our institutions. The country has shifted rightward, and the reverberations will ensue for potentially the next few decades. In this climate, a robust independent media ecosystem will be more important than ever. We're committed to bringing you the latest news on how Trump's agenda will actually affect the American people, shining a light on the stories corporate media overlooks and keeping the public informed about how power really works in this country.

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