In his Substack titled, “The Convention Spoke and Told Us: The GOP is Dead,” Kinzinger explained various examples of how the RNC demonstrated that Trump has succeeded in turning the GOP into a “cult of personality.”
From that Substack article:
It was called the Republican National Convention, but in fact, it had nothing to do with the GOP most of us once knew. Gone were the party’s serious policy debates and platform planks. In their place was a celebration of Donald Trump, who has succeeded in converting one of the country’s two major parties into a cult of personality. When it ended, the delegates sent a ticket into the presidential election with no true Republicans on it.
. . . Because it is now the Trump Party, the crowd in Milwaukee lapped up Navarro’s message of fear which, after all, is the gateway to rage. Few noticed that, contrary to tradition, past Republican leaders – former President Bush, past nominee Mitt Romney, and former Vice President Dan Quayle – were all absent.
. . . I won’t hide the fact that I grieve the old GOP and fear the cult of Trump. I am equally concerned, though, by Democrats who are shrinking from the fight, concluding that Trump’s election is inevitable. I would say that given a remnant of traditional Republicans remains, and independents must be turned off by a Trump who wants to be emperor. It’s time to gather our courage and energy. The fight against him is not lost.
I’ve said this for a while. General conservatism will likely make its way into the Democrats, and the GOP will likely align to populism - like many right-leaning parties have done worldwide.
What many have found is that when the right fails to gather support, they rapidly fall apart because all sides smell blood. The far-right have failed, so conservatives have a route towards taking control while the right claw back power where they can. It’s an epic battle where they tear each other apart, because their dear leader is gone and the cult of personality either needs another personality (near impossible, they rarely leave an heir) or a seismic shift that’ll take years.
I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis, but I disagree it’ll happen because conservatism in whatever form “centrists” promote it has been proven over and over again in stark terms, just in the last 10 years, to be a huge disgusting lie.
If one can actually derive a single ideal or principle out of the flaming wreckage of the shit transport that is the Trumpublican party it has been thoroughly disavowed by everyone else.
Fiscal conservatives will still make a stand because they have the dark magic of math on their side, but Social conservatives are right fucking out. And fiscal conservatives still have to account for tax breaks for billionaires and the ridiculous utter failure of “trickle down” which is a 40 year old con - ain’t nobody got time for that.