Quote:
Originally Posted by AltaGuy
As ever, the Republicans will need to move to the middle on many issues to get back to an even playing-field with the Democratic plurality.
As we've seen even in Canada, however, right-wing parties have difficulty jettisoning the crazies who tend to be their most fervent supporters, and who hold large grassroots organizational and fundraising power.
Many Republicans and undecideds are going to want the GOP to swerve to the middle if they get destroyed in this election. But if it's a struggle even for Canadian conservatives to drop the culture-war dinosaurs, it's going to be a very long road for GOP strategists who favour moving toward a middle ground.
Then again, the GOP doesn't play by any rules, so who knows what they'll come up with. Trump wins again, and I have no idea what we get.
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The problem is that the GOP has a collection of hardline views - religious freedom, second amendment, taxes, abortion, immigration, nationalism, (unstated racism) - the intersection of them is a finite Venn diagram. To expand they will need to let one or more of them go. They could for example appeal to conservative immigrants if they softened their immigration rhetoric. Until then they are trapped IMO like the way the CPC here is hobbled by the social conservative faction, but it’s many more such dimensions for the GOP.