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CPAC and Republican Party are not synonymous. Conservative and Republican are not synonymous. Currently I'd say 95% of Conservatives are in the Republican Party with the remaining 5% in the Libertarian Party. 45 years ago it was maybe 80% of Conservatives were in the Republican Party and 20% of Conservatives were in the Democratic Party. The Conservative Democrats were anti-Communist, pro-life, pro-military and pro-family. As the Democratic party moved away from those positions, Ronald Reagan swept them into the Republican Party and won 44 states and then 49 states.
But that coalition that Reagan built wasn't a majority Conservative coalition, it was a broad spectrum of moderates and even liberal Republicans. Reagan never called anyone a RINO. He welcomed everyone after he saw what a purist Conservative Republican Party looked like in Goldwater's defeat in 1964.
Which brings us to 2016, 2020 and 2024. Donald Trump is no Conservative and is barely a Republican. He might have won the Republican nomination in 2016, but he did so without winning a majority of the votes of Republicans in the primaries. More people voted for someone else than voted for Trump in the Republican nominating process. A hardcore base of 30% + a variable 5-10% voted for Trump while 60-65% voted for someone else through the first half of the campaign. If the Republican Party had any leadership they would have called a meeting of the "other candidates" at the end of February and settled on a candidate to challenge Trump.
Trump has not enhanced the Republican Party, nor united it on principles, like Reagan did. Trump has torn down the Republican Party and lifelong Republicans who dared to call him out on his nastiness. He is bad combination of Populist and Narcissist.
The country has done this to itself on how it treats candidates or rather would be candidates, and how the "silent majority" has allowed activist, extremists to be the driving forces of the party apparatus.
Mike Pence is his own worst enemy by having no personality as Ted Cruz is his worst by having an abrasive personality. Is it too much to ask to ask for a gracious, humorous person who has real convictions?
Trump is his own worst enemy. His bullying and petulance in the 2020 campaign cost him dearly. His bullying and abrasiveness in the first debate with Biden cost him a lot of support, cost him an additional debate and probably the election. If he'd been quiet and let Biden stumble through answers and look as befuddled as he is, Trump would have come out ahead.
Then his petulance after losing the 2020 presidential election, and criticizing the second stimulus payment (that his White House had already negotiated) cost the Republicans control of the Senate.
Trump's ego and personal pettiness was/is more important to him than the Party and the Country.
For all the good policies he had, his personal failings have been bad for the Republican Party and bad for the country.
Quick, name a federal elementary school for me! No? How about a federal high school? College?
The federal Department of Education should absolutely be abolished. There is no proper role for the federal government in education. It is a state and local issue. The $64 BILLION dollars that was the budget for FY 2020, is better spent elsewhere.
Tim I hardly agree with you but I agree with you on Trump. The problem is the "I'm conservative" crowd believes Trump is a conservative. And until he is charged, arrested and found guilty, he is sadly your Republican Party. That is both for the good things (ending the Department of Education) and the bad (claiming elections which are the basis of our democratic republic are fraudulent unless they go your way.) Until that changes, this independent do not see many Republicans are viable options.
The Party leader is still Trump, and DeSantis is waiting in the wings to grab the baton and run with it.
We're set for a MAGA comeback of epic proportions.
I can live with that.
Oh. And for the record, Liz Cheney was included in the straw poll.
She got zero percent
If we can get them in and get a good seat of congress to go along with them, it's going to take a good 10 years to clean up the mess that the Bush/Clinton/Obama dynasties have left us.
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