Midterms 2018: Trump’s Biggest Republican Critics Paid the Price
Kay Steiger, vox.com: Midterms 2018: Trump’s biggest Republican critics paid the price
From where we are now sitting, the conflict looks inevitable: America’s dwindling white Protestant majority, facing off against an unwieldy coalition of challengers, increasingly driven to “authoritarian, blood and soil politics” in defense of privilege. As that new study in PNAS puts it, what motivates Trump voters are trends that “threaten white Americans’ sense of dominant group status.”
That battle must play itself out. The GOP will only change when white-grievance politics is consistently rejected at the ballot box, as it is in California. Only if that happens will the party be open to change.
And if the party wants to change, it will seek reformers willing to return home.
That battle could take years, even decades. But by Taylor’s own reckoning, if the blood-and-soil contingent wins, American democracy could be lost. There is only one alternative to that outcome: the other side winning.
Like it or not, there are only two parties that matter in the US. For a Trumpist GOP to lose, the Democratic Party must win. ‘Tis math.