Fareed Zakaria points out what others are saying: The Republican Party is headed towards a reckoning. This has been long in the making. In a two-party system (and our electoral system makes a two-party system almost inevitable), parties must become coalitions. Left of center parties are usually known for their robust and powerful schisms. But right of center parties can fracture, too.
As Zakaria notes, the modern GOP built the Nixon-Reagan coalition: Chamber of Commerce Republicans allied with evangelicals, libertarians and the racist crack-up of the FDR coalition. For two decades, this coalition held a fair amount of sway in Washington, beginning with Nixon and Wallace capturing 57% of the vote combined. Large parts of America turned away from the anti-war Left and while Carter managed a narrow victory in the ashes of Watergate, from 1968 until 1992, he was the only Democratic candidate to win the presidency.
Since 1992, Bush - as an incumbent in 2004 - is the only Republican to win the popular vote. It is worth noting that Nixon improved on his margins in '72, Reagan improved on his margins in '84, Clinton improved on his margins in '96 and Bush improved on his margins in '04. Barack Obama is the only president I can find since 1900 to win re-election with a SMALLER percentage of the popular vote. You either improve on your margins (Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Dubya) or you lose re-election (Taft, Hoover, Carter, Bush 41, Trump) or your Barack Obama. (I left out "accidental" presidents who rise to power after a president dies or resigns, Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, LBJ and Ford.)
So, one thing is that the "new Trump voters" of 2020 represent this natural trend towards rewarding incumbency, buffered by the fact that Trump is a shithead and people hate him.
Anyways, the Republican Party has been staring a demographic problem in the face for a while now. Natural and partisan gerrymanders have helped preserve competitiveness in the Congress, but these demographic trends have turned Virginia from a battleground into a safely blue state. If Georgia and Arizona represent new battlegrounds, then North Carolina and Texas seemed destined to trend purple, too. While Democrats will have to play defense in the "Blue Wall," much of the Democratic part of the country is pretty solid.
The GOP needs to decide who they will become. Will they become the party of Mitt Romney or Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Honestly, I hope they splinter like the Whigs, the way Zakaria suggests. Eventually they will coalesce into a new party, but hopefully that one isn't batshit crazy. In the meantime, the grown ups can govern for a while.
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