The Politics of Extinction

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Today’s Republican Party is practicing the politics of extinction, pursuing activities and policies that will lead to its destruction — unless and until the decent but cowardly majority members of the party rise up against the minority of evil and stupid people who have declared themselves to be its leaders.

It’s important to remember that Donald Trump holds no office in the Republican Party. In the past, all our ex-presidents have, when termed or voted out of office, retired. They take up painting, or charity work, they build their library, and they shut the hell up. Even MAGA lunatics such as Herschel Walker and Dr. Oz had the grace to dive quietly into obscurity when their political heads were handed to them. Trump, on the other hand, defeated and disgraced,  acts like he is the head of the party and the party acts the same. But the party plan, which is the legally enforceable constitution of the party, does not provide for any such office. It defines a national committee that is the governing board and a chairperson who is its executive. Those people exist, but they are being  ignored.   

Trump’s successful hijacking of the party would be remarkable in and of itself, but his continued hold on it as he leads it full speed toward mass political suicide is just flat astonishing. 

There are two reasons why their fate is inevitable: for one thing, numbers don’t lie; for another, the Trump cultists do, all the time.

It is distressing that so few politicians and pundits understand the basic arithmetic underlying these events, and talk and act as though the country was evenly divided between Trump cultists and everyone else. Hard core Trumpists constitute less than one-third of registered Republican voters; who are one-third of all registered voters; who are 80% of the adult population qualified to be registered voters. Which means that the hard core is less than ten percent of the adult population. 

The numbers are clear. Trump can win a Republican Party primary election that has lots of contestants in it by holding tight to his base. But he cannot win a general election with such a tiny minority.

Things might be different if Trump was a skilled politician intent on growing his base. This is the central work of all politics, to attract ever more people to support your candidacy, your party and your cause. The work is constant, because attrition is unavoidable as people age, die, lose interest, move away, fall in love, etcetera. 

But Trump, supremely confident and supremely stupid, is a one-trick pony who has never learned the basics of politics or government. His one trick is to say things that make his most extreme followers foam at the mouth and howl at the moon. He loves it when they do that. But the more he does that, the more uncomfortable he makes everybody else in the political universe, including the more moderate among his own supporters and in his party.

As a result, his support, even among Republicans, is steadily shrinking, raising doubt about whether he can win even a primary and confirming the certainty that he cannot win a general election for president.

Moreover, while the great majority of his party stand mute, cowed into allowing him to cavort on the national stage as their leader, spewing hysterical lies and ever-more-deranged policies, they are encouraging the rest of the world to conclude that they are all mad, and they are becoming the incredible shrinking party. They are like vampires who have stumbled into full sunlight; soon there will be nothing there but some dust, blowing in the wind. 

This outcome will not be good for the country. We are best served when two vigorous parties subject government policies and intentions to intense scrutiny and debate (assuming that they act in good faith on behalf of their fellow citizens and not their donors). From here it seems unlikely that the country will ever be in such a place again.