What does the Republican Party look like after Trump?

[brooklynite]

Washington Post

President Trump has served one-quarter of his term in office. How much longer he serves is anyone’s guess; it could be three years, it could be five, it could — thanks to any number of possible outside occurrences — be only one or two.

But the Trump era will end, and a Republican Party that has been subsumed to the president’s personality, temper and raucous base will need to figure out a path forward.

What does that look like? Does it simply slip back into the Republican Party we saw under George W. Bush? The one we saw when Mitt Romney was the party’s candidate in 2012, when the underlying frictions of class and demography were still just emerging? Or will it look like something new, reshaped by Trump permanently?

We asked five Republicans who’ve been skeptical of Trump’s presidency for their thoughts in in-person interviews and over email. We focused on two questions: Will the Republican Party simply revert to the party we saw a decade ago? If not, what will it look like?

[Cary]

1. The Kochs will still own rhem

[jodymarie aimee]

2. I pray it is not Wisconsin

where I live.

[Cosmocat]

3. What it looks like now

People totally disconnected from reality alternatively living in fear of their deranged, rabid "base" and appeasing their power hungry, win at all costs nature.

Concern with actual governance - zero.

[MineralMan]

4. It looks like crap, just like always.

We need to energize Democrats to turn out in absolutely overwhelming numbers for every election. If we do that, the Republican Party will be toast.

Note: I have little confidence that we will to that. More likely, we'll just continue to bicker among ourselves and defeat ourselves.

[GeorgeGist]

5. Hopefully, it will be outlawed ...

like the Nazi's of yesteryear.

[Johonny]

6. There is no Republican party anymore. It is and will remain a shell corporation.

There hasn't been one since Citizen United. The have no platform, no ideas, no sense of nation, no belief in improving the lives of Americans, and thus no unified message even within the party. The party is in-name only for a collective bunch of individuals bought and sold by players far removed from the game. While the Koch brothers are obvious players, more and more we've learn that not just rich Americans, but foreign powers, and investors dominate the GOP. We're looking at a shell organization that talks like the GOP of 20 years ago at times, but more and more simply doesn't resemble anything we've seen before. They lie without remorse about everything, have their own TV station to cover their lies, they own all of radio and more and more of the print media, and more and more they use the dynamics of poorly thought out ways states pick congressional districts, or the nation builds our senate to create a majority out of a massive voter minority.

[gratuitous]

7. Sort of like Atlanta after Sherman got done?

Maybe not quite so organized.

[chowder66]

8. Trump replicants. nt