Republicans Are in a Box of Their Own Making
And it limits their long-term prospects
One of the more interesting and — at the same time — anxiety-producing aspects of our current politics in the United States is the abundance of paradoxes. My brain struggles to hold two opposing ideas as true at the same time.
On the one hand, I believe the current Republican party is an existential threat to our republic as long as it is in the thrall of Trumpism. On the other, how it got to this point predates Trump and with the addition of Trumpism after 2016, I suspect that its long-term prospects for a national-level majority are poor. The party’s history since the early 1990s and its embrace of Trump in the last seven years have sewn the seeds for long-term marginalization.
Part 1: The death of the “loyal opposition”
I believe the origin of our current political state was the Republican Congressional majority elected in 1994. It marked what I call the death of the loyal opposition. Prior to that time, both parties managed the balance of wanting the country’s affairs to continue with relative stability with wanting their side to win. This was perhaps most famously demonstrated by President George H.W. Bush’s letter to Bill Clinton when the latter assumed the presidency in January 1993.
