Will the Republicans regain their minds and souls once Trump is gone?

[Kablooie]

Or will they remain trapped in the Cult of the False Conspiracies forever?

I expect that as long as Fox News and it's ilk continue, they will remain under the spell of reality and morality deniers.
Trump is actually a symptom of the Fox News cult, not the cause.

[YOHABLO]

1. So they hadn't already sold their minds and souls before Trump?

Huh, who knew.

[Whiskeytide]

2. We HAVE to stop selectively remembering that ...

... they had them before trump. They didn’t. They just felt compelled to pretend they did.

[Atticus]

23. THIS! And, when Trump is gone, some---to save their asses and retain their power---will again

pretend to be "Average Joe". Trump did not convert them into the monsters they are, he just gave them official permission to be the mean assholes they've always been.

[RockRaven]

3. Yup, symptom not cause. Well causeS. Beyond RW media bubble there is also authoritarian delusion

training from a young age which cripples moral development and critical thinking skills while enhancing in-group thinking and a sick Manichean-Sith mashup worldview... *cough* religion *cough*

That's not going away any faster than FOXNews is going away.

[Flaleftist]

4. I suspect some other scumbag piece of shit will come along and mimick Trump

and take their votes and support.

[Turbineguy]

5. No.

They'll be looking for a replacement for trump. From the Russian casting studio.

[tulipsandroses]

6. No- we are unprepared for information warfare and propaganda - Republicans will continue to use it

to their benefit. They know it appeals to a certain audience. Quite sad.

[uponit7771]

43. +1,

[Doreen]

7. I do not think they had them in the first place.

You need to remember that a lot of the older Reagan humpers became trump humpers. Despite the fact that reagan had them saying "the only good Russian is a dead Russian" to saying what trump tells them to say now: "I would rather live in Russia than be a Democrat in the U.S.A."

To get caught up into that to the extent his true base is at means there is no mind or soul or even heart for that matter.

[Skittles]

8. no

they have been morally bankrupt LONG before they created Donald Fucking Trump

[NanceGreggs]

9. No ...

... but they'll put on a damned fine show pretending they have.

[Sherman A1]

10. I refer you to this DU Thread about the GOP

and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212707451

[Hortensis]

11. Yes. Ol' Harry Truman "gave 'em hell." Great speech!

At that, he left out the really dirty stuff, sticking to policy positions and not mentioning the corruption that's always fostered when belief in the super rights of those holding the cake cutters and contempt for liberal democracy is in proximity to giant cookie jars.

After all these years of observation, I believe strong conservatives in general (not moderate) are extremely unsuited to power in a liberal democracy such as ours. They don't believe in it and left to themselves would eradicate it.

[murielm99]

12. Not that long ago,

McTurtle vowed to make Obama's life miserable and make him a one-term President. He denied him his rightful choice of a Supreme Court justice. They will only continue their meanness if they continue to hold power.

[Bad Thoughts]

13. Did they learn their lesson after "Please proceed, Governor?"

Republicans have so thoroughly immersed themselves in propaganda and myths that they cannot see truth.

[diane in sf]

14. No, they sold out long ago. And their brainwashed masses won't permit sanity to prevail.

[rpannier]

15. They didn't have it before

Why would it change after he's gone
il douche is NOT the problem
The problem is they are a party wedded to power and personal gain no matter what
One only need look at their behavior during Clinton's presidency tyo realize that what they did to Obama was not new

[wendyb-NC]

16. They might feign it again

if a few of the main trumpetts go to jail for a while.

[BuffaloJackalope]

17. Their slow descent into madness started with the Nixon impeachment.

[NCLefty]

18. They will try to find a replacement asshole to satisfy their hateful ideology.

[C_U_L8R]

19. They can only regain what they had in the first place.

Apparently Republicans lost their minds and souls decades ago.

[oswaldactedalone]

29. Buchwald is right

I heard everyone of those expressions he notes. The Reputin Party did not learn a thing from Watergate. Instead they built their own propoganda networks, doubled down on corruption, and added to their smear campaign techniques. Watergate led the Reputin Party to the ledge and they have long since gone over it, crashing their wagon and now the rest of the country along with it.

[retread]

20. " regain" ?????

[JHB]

21. No. Only sustained losses will deflect them from their current business model

Brazenness, doubling down, and ratcheting up has worked for them for 40 years. They can accept occasional losses as long as they are in a position to grab the wheel back.

The only thing that will get the to stop that pattern is for it to fail repeatedly.

[Captain Stern]

22. I think that's a good question....I wish I had a good answer.

If any real republicans still exist, they are really quiet. I suspect they call themselves 'Independents' now.

I actually miss Republicans.

The ones I knew weren't bad people. When I spoke with them, we looked at the facts, and then we argued about the best course of action our government should take, based on the facts.

Of course, their ideas about what we should do were different than mine......but we at least agreed about what the actual, measurable, facts were.

But nowadays (ok, Boomer) when I try to speak to someone that calls themselves a republican we can't even get to the point where we agree on what the facts are. "Stock market was terrible under Obama" ...."Unemployment went up under Obama"...."Mueller report exonerated trump"

I don't think that was caused by Fox News. I think Fox News capitalized on something that was always there.

[edhopper]

24. What Republican Party are you talking about?

They haven't had a mind or soul since before Reagan.

[oasis]

25. No.They are who they are. Deplorable scum. nt

[maxrandb]

26. Doesn't matter... Vlad will still have their testicles in a jar on his nightstand

[PJMcK]

27. Republicans have been anti-American criminals for nearly my entire life

I'm in my 60s. Eisenhower was president when I was born and he was the last honorable Republican president.

1968 - Nixon
1980 - Reagan
1988 - Bush I
2000 - Bush II
2016 - Trump

Every one of them committed criminal acts as president.

Of course they're not going to change! It's in their DNA.

[jberryhill]

30. Yep

[doc03]

28. They are counting on Trump not being gone.

First thing if he gets re-elected they will do away with the term limits for the president.

[Bettie]

32. I honestly believe that if Trump manages

to retain office we'll never have another election, at least at the presidential level.

[doc03]

36. I agree. nt

[uponit7771]

44. +1, Republicans will magically just keep winning

[Bettie]

31. Some of them will pretend to

They will try to put on their masks of fake civility and demand that they be treated as if they are decent human beings.

We can't let them get away with it. There are no reasonable Republicans anymore. None. Zero.

[Hotler]

33. Dicks don't change. nt

[Downtown Hound]

34. They've been crazy zealots for as long as I've been paying attention to politics

And that's the 1990's. The only difference is that now they're a little more brazen about their racism and criminality, but it was always there.

So to answer your question...no. They will not. The hope at this point is that changing demographics will finish them off before they can finish the planet off.

[JCMach1]

35. No, the Xtian Fascism is real

[Volaris]

37. Nope.

The 'elected, establishment' Republicans will behave themselves for a congressional term, but the Base will continue to be just as looney toons as ever, with the addition of being pissed off that they know how dumb it would be to start an actual shooting fight, and as a result will nominate someone worse than trump (only better at PR .. like a Ted Cruz)

and then the elected republicans will go right back to being treasonweasels. Because they're not capable of learning enough from this experience to tell the base to go fuck themselves.

[Initech]

38. Not as long as Fox News and the AM radio hate sphere is still around.

If anything things will get worse. That's the sad reality.

[Garrett78]

39. They were rotten to the core long before Trump, who is a symptom of the rot.

[SlogginThroughIt]

40. They haven't been sane in at least 3 decades!

This is the party that has systematically marginalized women, has debased minorities trampled on their rights to vote among many others, have whored themselves out to the uber rich and much much more! There is no going back to sane-ness because they haven’t been for a very long time if ever.

Trump is the result of the disease.

[BlueIdaho]

41. The 30% True Believers are lost.

But a new moderately conservative party will form to take its place and edge these wackos to the extreme fringes of society.

[uponit7771]

42. Republicans were implementing voter suppression before Trump