Republicans Are Facing An Extinction Level Event

We all knew Republicans were screwed in the long term as a national party. What we didn't know is how screwed they were

by Justin Rosario

We all knew Republicans were screwed in the long term as a national party. What we didn't know is how screwed they were. And, buddy, lemme tell ya, "royally screwed" doesn't even begin to describe it. 

Over all, 59 percent of people 18 to 24 say they’re Democrats, compared with 33 percent who say they’re Republicans, according to an Upshot analysis of Pew Research Center data over the last year. Even young people who self-identify as Republicans, another Pew survey found, say they hold more liberal views than older Republicans on a wide range of issues — including race relations, the causes of climate change and the involvement of government in people's lives. The youngest Republican voters who supported Mitt Romney in 2012 were the most likely to abandon Mr. Trump in 2016.

Those are giant-rock-from-the-sky-wiping-out-the-dinosaurs extinction level numbers for Republicans.

Baby Boomers are currently between 55 and 75 years old and they are the overwhelming bulk of the GOP's voting base. Every day, a whole bunch of them keel over from old age. In the case of white Republican Baby Boomers, a good number of them are probably dying from the fear and stress induced by watching Fox News.

Meanwhile, this is happening to Millennials and Gen Z:

The Times then cites research from political scientists showing that voters establish partisan identity during their formative years and rarely switch even as they get older. For younger voters who have grown up during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Donald Trump, the Times suggests, that could mean a partisan aversion to the GOP that could haunt the party in coming years.

“Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia, and Yair Ghitza, the chief scientist at Catalist, have found that impressions about events from ages 14 to 24 are about three times as powerful in shaping political beliefs as events that happen when people are 40,”

In other words, not one, but two entire generations of voters have the following three presidents as examples:

1. George W. Bush, an incompetent who lied America into war and led the country into the Great Recession while Republicans exploded with anti-gay and anti-Muslim rage.

2. Barrack Obama, a flawed but overall decent person who spent 8 years cleaning up the disaster Republicans left him while facing the most horrible racism and obstruction ever thrown at a sitting president with grace and dignity. And he did all of that without a single scandal.

3. Donald Trump. 'Nuff said.

Bush was bad enough but Trump simply seals the deal. There are now tens of millions of Millennial and Gen Z voters who will, for the rest of their lives, only associate the Republican Party with the absolute worst the party has ever produced. Or any party has ever produced in American history for that matter.

Allow me to produce a single solitary tear for the party that openly embraced white nationalism. Boo hoo.

This is why Republicans have spent so much time and effort trying to sour the entire country on the very idea of politics. They want the public, particularly younger voters, to be so disgusted with the process that they will stay home. By creating gridlock, they know the media will oblige and blame "both sides," thereby creating the illusion that both parties are “just as bad”. How do you convince young voters that the party of Obama is equally as despicable as the party of Bush and Trump? Set everything on fire and have someone else point the finger at "both sides."

Cynical? Yes. Effective? Enough to allow them to barely edge the 2016 election (and by barely edge, I mean lose, given Hillary Clinton got almost 3 million votes more than Trump). But now Republicans are running up against the limits of deception. The right wing was bad under Bush. But it's become so awful under Trump's, ahem, "leadership" that ten thousand Chis Cillizzas and Chuck Todds screaming "Both sides! Can't you see it's both sides!!" can't cover up the open sewer that is the Republican Party.

One side is attracting literal Nazis while the other side is electing people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And while the younger, more diverse voters may not like the older, whiter establishment Democrats, it's clear where the parties are heading. One is plunging headfirst into fascism and white nationalism and the other towards the mainstream diversity of the majority of America.

As younger voters form their political identities, the choice is between a fixer-upper and a dumpster fire of misogynistic white nationalist insanity. Not exactly a brain-buster of a choice if you're part of the increasingly large part of the population that isn't a straight, white, heterosexual Christian man. This is why 60% of younger voters identify as Democrats and only 33% identify as Republican, thus sealing the fate of the GOP within 15 years or so.

And that brings us to the frantic rush of Mitch McConnell to stuff the courts with as many extremists as possible. These will not be judges who will rule in accordance to any legal precedents or constitutional principles. These will be Republicans who will use the courts for the sole purpose of advancing the GOP's agenda by any means necessary. They will ignore the rule of law and attempt to run the country by judicial fiat.

In fact, they'll have to, or everything the right has worked for over the last 50 years goes away. Under Democratic rule, ridiculous tax loopholes will be closed and corporations will be made to pay their fair share. We'll have a better eduction system, less debt, and people will be free not to die from lack of medical care.

But none of that will happen as long as the courts are controlled by Republican operatives. Republican lawyers will sue to block every law passed by a Democratic congress and signed by a Democratic president. Then Republican judges will find ludicrous excuses to overturn those laws or weaken them to the point of uselessness. Meanwhile, the Republican Supreme Court will continue to enact law from the bench, something Republicans once claimed to loath, in order to pursue Republican goals of deregulation, voter suppression, weakening the federal government, and so on and so forth.

Like all fascists, McConnell is using our democracy to end it. The power grab is happening in broad daylight, in front of the entire nation. One can only assume that when Democrats take power, the press will revert to type and hold them to a completely different set of standards so they will be unable to undo the damage.

For example: Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat. The ideological balance of the Court should now be 5-4 to the left or at least to the center. The press harrumphed a little bit but otherwise let it slide. It's just hardball politics, after all. What can you do? The remedy for this abuse would be to add another 2 seats to balance out the theft when the Democrats take control (not one because you always need an odd number). The chances of the press not exploding in outrage at this "abuse of power" by Democrats is zero. The media would take its cue from Fox and whip the public into a frenzy to oppose it. Democrats don't get to play hardball, you see. They have to work with Republicans for...reasons whereas Republicans are allowed to violate every political norm with impunity because...other reasons.

But even this power grab won't last for long. With the Republican Party dying, literally, from old age, they will lose their ability to take back the Senate, the House, or the White House for what may be decades. McConnell's extremists will not be able to stop everything and the Supreme Court will tilt back to the left soon enough as Bush 41 and 43's appointments retire or die, leaving Trump's illegitimate seats isolated and impotent.

All McConnell is doing is delaying the inevitable. Instead of working to make his party viable for the future, he's frantically building a sandbag levee to keep the waters at bay and hoping for a miracle. Maybe another terrorist attack on American soil will give the GOP the power it wielded after 9/11. Maybe the next Democratic president will be just as corrupt as Trump (good luck with that) and sour people on voting for Democrats. Maybe there will be an economic collapse so severe that the government will collapse and McConnell's billionaire masters can seize control directly instead of slowly grinding democracy to dust. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

This long view of politics (15 years is an eternity!) will be of cold comfort to the millions of lives being destroyed by Republican arson now, but if America can hold out a little longer, we can finally flush the open sewer down the drain and really make America great again. And not just for old white men.

(image via AP)

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