Political parties have dominant ideologies or ethos, and these change over time. In 1980, Republicans went from an older country club Republicanism to Reagan’s movement conservatism. In 2016, we saw neoconservatism (a development of movement conservatism) overtaken by MAGA. Usually these ideological strains are active in the party but dont take over until the older ideology is discredited in some way.
Let’s say, for whatever reason, a new ideology takes over the Republican Party from MAGA at some point in the future. What do you think it might be?
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Political parties have dominant ideologies or ethos, and these change over time. In 1980, Republicans went from an older country club Republicanism to Reagan’s movement conservatism. In 2016, we saw neoconservatism (a development of movement conservatism) overtaken by MAGA. Usually these ideological strains are active in the party but dont take over until the older ideology is discredited in some way.
Let’s say, for whatever reason, a new ideology takes over the Republican Party from MAGA at some point in the future. What do you think it might be?
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Religious conservatives.
I’m one of those people that thinks maga is just branding. The gop picked up the working class people that voted for Clinton and Obama. That’s it. Cultural conservatism/nationalism will live on under a different name. Culturally speaking these people haven’t changed much in 50 years.
The Republican party’s history can be neatly summed up as: “And then it got worse”.
So, I would assume it’s some sort of turbo MAGA that turns the stupid to a level we never thought possible.
Each time it has gone further to the right. What do think is to the right of MAGA?
I think even if Trump becomes unpopular with the party, Trumpism won’t die. They will carry on his 2016 promises even if they do hate the man who didn’t deliver those promises.
Christian Nationalism is a strong possibility.
You could see a new coalition where you take the traditional white grievance and stop focusing on people being white but rather on Christianity. Hatred of LGBT people and feminism and pivoting from racism to xenophobia.
It would satisfy a major aspect of MAGA, which is the desire to kneel in submission to a God king as long as you get to knee on the neck of someone lower than you in the hierarchy.
Groypers but more refined. You could see a JD Vance or Ron DeSantis type but with more charisma leading such a movement.
MAGA isn’t the same thing as the “republican party”. there are republicans who vote for it because they’re of the mindset that if the MAGA shit wins, it’s easier to ride it out until it passes than to temporarily lose elections and get stuff back. i personally think far right ideologies will kinda get left behind as time goes on and republicans will get back to a more centrist ideology without trump around.
people have to remember that politics are a game at the end of the day. it’s based around strategies to get the most people to buy into what you’re selling. i think the MAGA stuff is nearing the end of their run and while it related to a lot of people for awhile, there will be a massive image change in the years after. the republican party has two choices on what to embrace going forward…..the middle or the far right. if they embrace the latter of those two it’ll be a cake walk in terms of elections because not a ton of people fall into that category, even if some people think there are. if they embrace the middle, democrats need to get their act together because it won’t be easy.
I mean if the new right zoomers are any indication of the rights future. It’s gonna be some kind of crypto fascism, combination of tech bro authoritarians and weird religious fascists.
The religious evangelical right faction has always been the voter backbone of the right and will likely continue to be regardless of MAGA. But they are not centralized enough to have a coherent ideology that can form the centerpiece of a political regime. Catholics do tho, so keep an eye on that development.
The main question is what causes MAGA to fall? If it’s a moral failing like Epstein, the Republican Party will likely continue in an economic populist direction. If it’s tariffs, then some neocon economic remix will return (new neocons 2: electric Boogaloo) to displace the populists. I’m thinking something like a free-market/tech-right/automation/libertarian/deregulation/pro-central banks flavor.
The backlash on progressive/idpol/transgender surgeries on BIPOC, illegal immigrant, imprisoned minors politics has pretty much fully metastasized into the American consciousness including the democratic ranks. It’s in Republican interests to continue to play up the incoherence of this ideology.
In a similar vein, it’s in Republican interests to continue to stoke the flames of the Marxist-communist-Mamdani-Somalian-Sharia law-atheist-satanic-baby killer-DEI progressive left. We’ll see how this one develops too.
The anti-immigrant faction will continue no matter what happens to Trump. I think this sub is somewhat delusional. It is in their interest to wish for an ethno-nationalist Republican Party to easily defeat at the polls. If you’re a Republican pundit, your dream is to further increase the margins from minority and working class voters. So, you want to de-emphasize race. Something like Bannon-style economic populism, aka “non-ethnic fascism” in the words of Jreg.
The thing I care about the most is owning things vs being a permanent renter/debtor class. I prefer MAGA style economic populism more than whatever populism is on the left because it relies more on pre-distributive policies. As far as I’m concerned, the left is going to take all our agency, replace it with entitlements, and tell us to be happy as we lose a greater share of the American pie. But I’m a bit biased obv 🙃
If there isn’t racism to unite the party all i can think of is mass delusion.
Like, I was raised in a pentecostal church where they “spoke in tongues.” They told everyone it was some holy thing that God did to people. So, i prayed and waited for my mouth to just start miraculously speaking some other language. That, of course, never happened but at some point I figured out I could fake it. And because i spent so much time praying for it I should be allowed to fake it – i had “earned” it, my moral gauge started at “im not worthy,” like they teach everyone, but after time i grew confident that in fact i was worthy. There was something like a shortcut in my head that opened up, bypassing the check i usually have to determine if something is believable. It simply didn’t apply to speaking in tongues. That was real whether it was faked or not.
It was all nonsense but the feeling of accomplishment was real. In hindsight everyone probably came up with the same sort of justification for faking it (as they were all, in fact, faking it. Still are).
That feeling of accomplishment despite the accomplishment being completely imaginary is pretty much the only possible way to continue getting any votes, for the republican party if the Maga/racsim goes away. Now, it’s also possible they decide to bypass elections to cement their own power pernanently, but they really don’t have to do that. The control the right has over the media is bordering absolute. They were able to get an openly racist convict who nearly drove us into a depression and tried to overthrow the US government elected president. They can certianly accomplish any other form of mass brainwashing.
The Republican party is reactionary to whatever the Democratic party is doing. New deal Democrats caused the Republican party of less government. The Clinton era lead to the party of family values and war Hawks. The Obama era lead to the party of white grievance and anti woke. Of course none of them actually believed in what they said they wanted to do. So what ever direction the Democratic party moves in the Republicans will be there to oppose it.
…. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, eh?
There is no way for Republicans to rehabilitate their brand. It would be like Germans voting for National Socialists in 1946.
A truly conservative political party that is pro-America and not facists is badly needed.
I imagine the moderates that currently occupy the Democratic party. If MAGA loses its foothold, then we would have successfully converted the Democratic party and large elements of our government to be left-leaning which would leave political liberals and moderates without a home. If that never happens, then MAGA will never really lose power as they will never have an actual opponent.
It will be Elon Musk or some other tech Billionaire. A lot of Americans worship and idolize the wealthy.
I don’t know how much more right wing “MAGA”-branded Republicans can get. I expect any change to just be a matter of having more Connors and fewer Connors-in-denial. I don’t know why they’d move in a more liberal, American direction when they can just elect people who will pardon their murderers and terrorists.
And “MAGA” is the current branding, but it’s not a new ideological strain. Rank-and-file Republicans are just more able to assert themselves since the Tea Party, to the point that the “establishment” party leadership couldn’t stop Trump from giving them what they’d been demanding.
The same evangelical talibans with the Trump brand filed off.
Something even worse.
“If MAGA loses its dominance in the Republican Party, what is most likely to take its place?”
Libertarianism.
Something else terrible, probably and if recent memory is anything it will be even stupider. Maga does sprung up from the tea party idiots who were really mad we had a black president but were smart enough to lie about that and claim it was his policies. The. Maga came along as was like let’s round up everyone brown and deport them. If the trajectory follows, in a few election cycles the GOP will have the grand wizard of the KKK on the ballot.