Sometimes, in life, relationships end. People get to a point where they just have nothing in common anymore and the best thing for all involved is for them to split up and go their separate ways. And it just may be the best thing for America if devoted Trump supporters and anti-Trump Republicans both take their leave from the Republican party.
According to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll released Sunday, 46 percent of Republicans who voted for Donald Trump say they would leave the GOP if he started a new one; only 27 percent say they wouldn't and the rest aren't sure. At the same time, anti-Trump Republicans are reportedly abandoning the party in droves, unsure of where their new political home will even be.
Who would this leave in the actual Republican party? Hopefully no one!
Fifty percent of Trump voters who spoke toUSA Today also said the party needs to be more loyal to Trump, who is supposedly going to be declaring himself the presumptive Republican nominee for 2024 at the upcoming CPAC convention. Only 19 percent disagreed.
On the other side, some of the anti-Trump Republicans have also been discussing forming their own party, or something to that effect.
Earlier this month, Evan McMullin, who ran against Trump as an independent in 2016, and more than 100 other Republicans and former Republican officials and strategists held a widely publicized meeting at which they discussed the prospect of a third party or organizing as a faction within the GOP.
Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff in Trump's Department of Homeland Security who started a group of administration officials and other Republicans working against Trump's reelection last year, said he and McMullin, with whom he is coordinating, are not "dead set on a third party."
Rather, he said, "What we are dead set on is that something dramatic needs to happen, and there needs to be a very, very clear break from what the GOP has been for the last four years."
Right now, there is record level support for abandoning the two party system — about two-thirds of the country thinks we need a third party — although I would think at least four would be ideal. With three parties you'd end up with a right-wing party, a left-wing party and a centrist party, and it seems like it would work out better for the two parties to each split into two, as to avoid ending up with only one giant dominant party.
There could also be another upside to this, other than just the Republicans breaking up with each other, in the form of more support for ranked choice voting, which is much better and more democratic, and would actually allow for third parties. It would also make it a lot easier to get money out of politics.
This split is a fairly interesting development given that some of the only actual differences between Trumpers and anti-Trump Republicans are in the area of demeanor and personality. Trump supporters love to complain complain about "Establishment Republicans," but the actual ideological differences between the two factions are minimal. There aren't many actual major divides or disagreements on policy, so much as whether or not to say the quiet parts out loud or not. So-called Establishment Republicans want to look respectable while they're cutting rich people's taxes, oppressing everyone else and murdering the planet, and the Trumpers, well, they just want to be told they're pretty and that their enemies are bad. That is what they think "fighting for them" means.
"We feel like Republicans don't fight enough for us, and we all see Donald Trump fighting for us as hard as he can, every single day," Brandon Keidl, 27, a Republican and small-business owner from Milwaukee, says in an interview after being polled. "But then you have establishment Republicans who just agree with establishment Democrats and everything, and they don't ever push back."
Weird how that is the complete opposite of what has gone on over the last several decades. Republicans have actually shut the entire government down a few times because they didn't get their way, so I don't really recall them capitulating on anything. Maybe a few votes from John McCain, Lisa Murkowski or Mitt Romney here and there, but certainly not as a group.
Of course, I don't want to discourage them. These differences are, without question, absolutely irreconcilable and can never be mended. They must strike out on their own, follow their bliss and maybe even get out of politics altogether.
As for our own differences, at least when Dems disarray, we disarray over actual policy and not whether or not we are getting enough compliments.
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Robyn Pennacchia is a brilliant, fabulously talented and visually stunning angel of a human being, who shrugged off what she is pretty sure would have been a Tony Award-winning career in musical theater in order to write about stuff on the internet. Follow her on Twitter at @RobynElyse
