For all the many, many volumes that have been written about the 2020 election, nobody really seems to have come up with a moment in the campaign that Trump definitely lost it right then and there. Of course his fanboys like to act like it was when Twitter and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story, but it’s questionable how much they actually sincerely believe that shit. There’s nothing to point to like the late October 2016 Comey letter announcing reopening the Hillary Clinton emails investigation which, if it wasn’t a real turning point it was certainly a neatly symbolic culmination of all the many, many issues she had with appealing to swing voters.
Was it the “inject disinfectants” comment? The first debate when Trump melted down on stage and told the Proud Boys to “stand by”? When he caught COVID-19 and nearly died a few days later? It was all of those things and much more, but not any one of them that can be picked out as neatly as the Republican 2012 Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin imploding his chances in a winnable race by explaining that rape exceptions to abortion bans were unnecessary because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
That Trump said and did worse shit as president and that the normal rules don’t apply to him makes it pretty much impossible to determine if any one thing did him in and if yes then what was it. But for the sake of argument let’s say it was the COVID-19 diagnosis and his few days in the hospital after that. In the first 24 hours, the MAGA internet was – to put it gently – in state of absolute despair.
They dropped their hubris momentarily and gave into dread, knowing that it was the end, that their Orange God Emperor was going to lose to Joe Biden. Trump recovered, and with it their hopes – at least outwardly. But for them that bad vibe ultimately proved correct.
A very loose and unstated principle of this site is to be extremely humble and circumspect about what X or Y means for Z. That doesn’t mean we always follow it, sometimes we get ahead of our skis and get hypnotized into the group think-y 21st century American political media culture and its fucking takes. Just endless, infinite takes, so hot they sizzle off the screen.
The mainstream takes on the state of the MAGA Republican Party and its future are a little extra hot these days. Like that goddamned French bakery on Smith Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn that purposely pumps the smell of their fresh baguettes out into the street that to even a half empty stomach feels like getting stabbed with an icepick, these takes are so deliciously enticing you want to drop your bone-deep pessimism and indulge in the highly caloric freshly baked hope.
“This week marked a low point for Republicans as they prepare for the 2024 elections: Former President Trump is once again the dominant force in the party, which is showing little indication of trying to appeal to swing voters. By aligning with Trump’s grievances and promoting tougher abortion restrictions, it’s increasingly difficult for the GOP to win outside of deep-red strongholds,” wrote insufferable Axios circlejerker Josh Kraushaar last week, six months after he wrote “Two weeks out from the midterms, evidence points to a re-emerging red wave that could sweep in GOP control of both chambers… Abortion may have peaked too soon as a motivating issue.”
“It’s been said that a rat is never more dangerous than when it finds itself trapped in a corner. Facing defeat, that rodent won’t perish in docile resignation. Teeth bared, it will lunge at its target determined to inflict as much damage as possible, shrieking and snarling until its last ragged breath. That’s the Republican Party – a rat in its death throes,” writes Renée Graham at the Boston Globe in a piece bluntly titled “The end of the Republican Party.”
“Republicans at the national level, right now, are scared. You can hear it in their silence on the issue of abortion after a district judge in Texas struck down the FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. That decision also came immediately after Republicans lost a key race for a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin to a progressive jurist who ran, to a large extent, on abortion rights,” writes National Review editor Rich Lowry in a Politico Magazine piece.
And then there’s the fanboys themselves getting all worked up:
Ali Alexander telegraphs the GOP plan for 2024, which is to win not via the popular vote but through vote challenges and corrupt courts stacked with right-wing judges:
“We just lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I do not see a path to 270 in 2024.” pic.twitter.com/rfb19frtOF
— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath) April 5, 2023
Trump arraigned, Marxist wins Mayoral race in Chicago, and Democrats flip Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Very bad day. No spin, no bs. Country is in collapse. We need God and dutiful action.
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 5, 2023
Chicago has fallen.
Breaking: Far-Left Democrat Brandon Johnson Wins Chicago Mayoral Race
To quote @emeriticus: The Right memes. The Left wins elections.
How many of us were even aware of the Chicago mayoral and Wisconsin Supreme Court elections today? How many GOP voters? https://t.co/jdKqZatmFt
— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) April 5, 2023
No point in taking more time to outline the actual objective reality of the situation beneath all of these takes and vibes other than to say there’s simply not going to be any meaningful change Republicans on abortion, guns, Trump, and democracy any time before the 2024 election. As much shit as they want to talk about “moderating the message” they can’t unconfirm these psychopath judges or compromise with the Democrats on another meager gun control package. Ron DeSantis isn’t going to beat Trump and even if he did how the fuck is passing a six-week abortion ban and getting pantsed by Disney something he’s going to be able to sell swing voters?
Beyond what is going wrong or did go wrong for them there’s worse: Fox News, their number one propaganda network could be hobbled with billions in judgements owed to Dominion, Smartmatic, and their shareholders (oh and this is happening while they’re renegotiating carriage fees with TV providers), while Newsmax and OANN could be shut down completely. There could be a federal criminal investigation, maybe even an indictment, of their longest currently serving Supreme Court justice while the Democrats have a Senate majority to confirm a replacement. There’s no question their voters are going to throw away winnable races by nominating unelectable mental patients and QAnon freaks instead of competent, smarmy, Glenn Youngkin-esque capitalists. Probably even some of the same ones, like Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano. The only question is how many.
You know that trope about the frog in the boiling pot of water and how lots of writers use that to describe a situation in which nobody recognizes the temperature change until after the frog has already boiled? It’s so clever, especially when they use it in an essay about climate change because the part about temperature is especially pertinent. We should use that one here at National Zero.
The Republican Party has been declining and falling for decades. We need not go into all the “demographics is destiny,” “Millennials and Gen-Z voters,” how many times they won the electoral college since 1990, rural whites are declining as a share of voters, and the Tea Party and Trump were just anomalies, blah blah blah. You’ve read all that before and are sick of getting burned by statistical analyses. We’re not trying to sell you on evidence here. Feels, not facts, on this one.
And something just feels different. Like in a vacuum Jesse Watters complaining bitterly about how impotent the House GOP investigations have been so far, Don Jr being the voice of reason in the outrage over those stupid Bud Light cans, or our favorite Florida MAGA asshole failed Congressional candidate Anthony Sabatini trying to push the state GOP to pass a resolution that “DEMANDS THAT ALL REPUBLICAN MEMBERS OF FLORIDA’S CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION AND STATE GOVERNMENT EXERCISE ALL MEANS NECESSARY TO PREVENT AND IMPEDE” Trump’s prosecution in New York are just normal day-to-day shit in this thoroughly demented and twisted GOP.
Put together with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp warning that “Not a single swing voter in a single swing state will vote for our nominee if they choose to talk about the 2020 election being stolen,” or Ronna Not-Romney saying abortion is “not an issue that is going away for our party in a post-Dobbs world and we can’t put our head in the sand thinking that it’s going to heading into 2024,” it’s still the same-old same-old juxtaposition of the MAGA batshittery with the “GOP establishment” that cannot exist without being propped up by the MAGA batshittery.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) April 16, 2023
But when you put all of that up against their Dear Leader warning that in the 2024 election Republicans “have no choice. If we don’t do this, our country will be lost forever… This is the final battle. They know it, I know it, You know it, everybody knows it. This is it. Either they win, or we win and if they win, we no longer have a country,” to the crowd at CPAC last month does the current moment beg the provocative question we posed in the headline.
Lose in 2024 and Trump is gone. Probably in prison by 2026, so he isn’t coming back again. With him go tens of millions of racist mutants and QAnon freaks who have no interest in voting for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz – neither of whom have any real appeal to suburban swing voters after nearly a decade of debasing themselves for Trump to appeal to to the racist mutants and QAnon freaks.
Then what? Marjorie Taylor Greene crushes Josh Hawley in the 2028 primary so President Kamala Harris can debate an empty podium because Marge was too busy screaming into a bullhorn outside of Leavenworth that night? How’s that going to play in those “crucial WOW counties” in Wisconsin or in one of those other “bellwethers” the media never shuts the fuck up about?
All the caveats and qualifiers aside about how Democrats could and maybe will invent interesting new ways to fuck things up for themselves, or outside events – a really bad recession, war, major natural disaster, another pandemic, you name it – could create opportunities for the Republicans to reassert themselves, it might really be worth asking if Republicans are in the final spiral.
And maybe the tipping point has already come and gone. Maybe what happened last year in the midterms wasn’t simply the Democrats being saved from disaster by the Dobbs decision, but Republicans being saved from disaster by inflation and gas prices. That what little they won in 2022 is going to be the best they can do from here on out. If so, then the end’s already begun.