re: #1069 Killgore Trout

I wouldn’t expect a great populist purge like we saw after 08. The Tea Party was a disaster and the revival of libertarian wackos is still hurting the party today. I also don’t expect them to purge the religious right either, they’ve been part of the party infrastructure for far too long. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a slow gravitation towards more moderate voices such as Frum. Probably making more of an effort to vet congressional candidates early on to weed out nutcases, more funding to prop up more electable candidates against them in the primaries. I really think the only way forward for American conservatism is less fundamentalism. I don’t think there’s much doubt about it. It’ll be interesting to see what they do.

The GOP would go along way towards revival if they would just drop the extremist positions on immigration and abortion, like the Dems dropped gun control a few years back. These positions are all risk, no reward. Let the fundies sit at home stewing in their own idiocy on election day, there are far more votes in the middle.