No. of Recommendations: 4
Ah, the Grand Old Party is dead and gone.
Yes - it's certainly been altered beyond recognition.
Not just in the U.S., BTW. The old Reagan-Thatcherite model of right-wing and center-right parties has been thrown out all across Europe as well. The old conservative parties have been chucked, replaced by right-wing populist parties. The RN in France, AfG in Germany...they're an amalgam of right-wing nationalism and support for the social welfare state and protectionism.
But again....this is why Democrats won't be able to run an effective "Project 2025" campaign against Trump. He's destroyed the Establishment Republican wing of the party. The Romney/Bush faction was cast out into exile. The free trade and austerity group has been purged. It's not just that these folks are no longer ascendant in the GOP - they've been expunged from the party, persona non grata. It's not just a fairly obvious fact of Trumpism, but it's something that Democrats are actively telling voters.
But you can't be out there telling voters that and then simultaneously argue that this is still your grandfather's GOP. That even as the crowd rains thunderous boos down on Mitch McConnell, and Mitt Romney can't even show his face, that the Trump Administration is actually going to be wired so that faction of the party is going to be given control over policy. Paul Ryan would be hung from the rafters if he showed up in Milwaukee, but Trump's going to let that side of the party really be in charge of his economic policy?
I understand why Democrats want to do this. They've got an excellent political playbook for running against the old Reaganite GOP. Drowning a shrunken government in a bathtub is an unpopular policy, because people like a lot of what government does (Medicare, Social Security, building roads, etc.). So Democrats were able to keep a lot of voters on their side of the ticket by pointing out that the GOP wanted to drown a shrunken government in the bathtub. They'd really like to play that same campaign again without having to adjust to the fact that the GOP has changed...so they're going to try to convince voters that the GOP hasn't actually changed. By trying to convince voters to ignore everything they're seeing about the Populist takeover of the GOP (and almost every other right-wing party in the West)...to ignore a lot of what Democrats are saying about the Populist takeover of the GOP.
Again, though, it's hard to see that actually working. Paul Krugman can gesture at Project 2025 and say, "No, see, that's the real GOP! Don't believe what you see on the TV when McConnell gets boo'ed - his kind are still going to be in charge!" but I don't think it will work.
The Grand Old Party is indeed dead and gone - and pointing to its corpse in Project 2025 isn't going to convince anyone otherwise.
