Just my humble opinion, I thought w. Erik's be the end of that putrid party.

Peace

socialists ?

Bernie Sanders lost huge after running nonstop for 5 years .

I'm a moderate and I would never join the GOP. If the majority of the Democratic party had a Bernie Sanders style philosophy I would still be a member of the Democratic party. I think you have a skewed sense of the people in our party and it is negatively effecting your judgement as well as any short term results.
Thanks!
Eko

led by "never trump" repubs and ad third way.

There are people here who might be thought of as being more 'centrist' and others that may lean more toward being 'progressive.'

I've often thought the the GOP, as corrupt as it has become, would in fact go the way of the Whigs - straight into the dustbin of history (and into jail cells for a number of them).

Should this happen, we need people who, regardless of whatever label you wish to attach - centrist, progressive, liberal, conservative - that doesn't matter nearly as much as their willingness to engage in serious debate and then compromise to move forward. This is the way our founders set up this republic and speaking for myself, I'm quite aware that I won't always get my way.

That's cool. Not always getting your way, I mean. The founders set this thing up to require lots of debate and compromise because they knew if one group got too much power they could go the wrong direction really fast.

The main thing: the people we replace these Republicans with need to actually WANT to govern us, unlike the people who profess to hate government and sabotage it as much as they can, which is what the Republicans have been doing since the days of Reagan.

By the way, welcome to DU.

I think this year, Trump and the Republicans are going to lose in a landslide. Their race baiting bullshit is the last gasps of conservative baby boomer philosophy and that is why they are trying one last desperate push under Trump to go back to decades ago.

After Biden and the Dems win, the Republican party begins to shrink as the baby boomer generation ages. They are then replaced by moderate and conservative democrats that Sanders democrats are booting from office in primaries.

In 2020 I think there will be a grand alliance to get trump out of office composed of moderate Dems, very liberal Dems, conservative independents, and some left leaning Republicans. That alliance will then fracture in the next few years. Groups like The Lincoln Project will lure over moderate and conservative Dems to the Republicans, after which the Republican Party will become similar to the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton while the Democrats will become basically the party built by Bernie Sanders. By 2025-2030, the Republicans will be older millenials and Gen X voters who talk about wanting to go back to the 1990s, while the Democrats will be controlled by more younger millenials and Gen Z voters with a democratic socialist philosophy.

The Cons, the Liberals and the NDP.

Conservatives, centrists and democratic socialists.

I'm not exactly a "Bernie Bro", but calling it as I see it, he's left an indelible mark.

the GOP becoming a full-on hard right party, or a new Center-Right party, possibly growing out of seeds planted by "The Lincoln Project" that puts the GOP in it's grave.

Either way, the GOP is about to go through some painful changes. Their mega donors won't stick around long if they aren't getting a return on their investment. The bottom-feeding teabaggers and trumpish don't number enough to carry a serious party.

The GOP is essentially controlled by a massively-funded hard right-wing machine that's invisible to the public. Their storefront is the huge right-wing media machine (Fox, Limbaugh, social media, etc.) and dozens of powerful think tanks.

That machine will not allow anyone that has not been adequately brainwashed and who does not have a clean history of right-wing credentials to run for office.

Their history of demanding political purity and loyalty proves it.

KY

...to Dubya's Great Recession. Every time, they've burst out of the grave just like the monster in a grade-z thriller, generally in time to win the next election. Hell, the nomination of Trump was supposed to lead to an electoral debacle in 2016 that would finish off the G.O.P. once and for all (again).

Fact is, even if they lose badly this November, they'll spend the next four years exploiting every possible misstep or even bit of bad press for Biden. And, come 2024, they'll find one among their own who can offer "Trumpism with a human face" -- in other words, can harness all the racial and social resentments that proved decisive last time around, but do it in a more polished and refined manner, providing dog-whistles instead of out-and-out prejudice and hate. And, soon, the same forces that turned out for Cheetolini last time will be rallying around that guy as well.

I think this one needs to ferment a little longer. The GOP will rebrand itself -- that is an absolute certainty. Where the theory goes seriously astray -- is in imagining that former Democrats are going to have anything at all to do with it. Not. Gonna. Happen. Full stop.