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If Trump destroys GOP, he may take DNC down with him
h/t Instapundit
If the Republican Party dies, will it take the Democrats with it?

George Will, among others, predicts that if Donald Trump wins the nomination and the presidency -- the first, not much of an "if" after Indiana, the second quite a large one -- it will destroy the Republican Party. I think he's probably right, though it depends what you mean by "destroy." There would still be something called the Republican Party under a President Trump; it just won't be the same anymore.

This sort of thing happens all the time in business and entertainment. 3M started out as a mining company; now it makes sticky notes (and seemingly a trillion other things). Maybe giving Trump the lead vocals of the GOP will be like when Van Halen replaced David Lee Roth with Sammy Hagar -- not the same band, but pretty successful all the same.

That’s a bad analogy, of course. Because Hagar was a good frontman with the full support of his band. Give Trump the mic, and a lot of the most talented people in the Republican Party will drop their instruments and walk off the stage.

But a lot of new people might like the show. The Trump campaign points to all the working-class Democrats and independents flocking to his message, nowhere more so than in Indiana on Tuesday. If they're successful, the GOP won't be the party of limited government and free markets anymore.
Unlike it was until now?
Instead, it will be more like a party of a kind of statist white-identity politics, of the sort that is common across much of Europe. White folks can play the multiculturalism game, too.

...Whether Trump destroys or merely transforms the GOP, the net effect could be the same: Both parties could lose their reliable rationale for existence. That kind of creative destruction could leave a vacuum for one or more new parties to fill the void.


Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-05-05
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=454876