Donald Trump. File

Donald Trumps suggestion that the US election be postponed shouldnt come as a great surprise. He might not admit it but hell have seen the polling. Its sufficiently bad that in many quarters its already assumed that hes lost.

This is still quite a leap given how volatile the outlook is and his previous defying of the odds (which have contracted a bit in recent days).

But enough people have taken his defeat as a certainty to start a debate over the future of the Republican Party.

Bret Stephens, a Conservative writer for The New York Times, defined this as a battle between the What Were We Thinking side of the party, keen to hurry back to what it was when Paul Ryan was its star, and the Didnt Go Far Enough arm of Trumpist true believers and the cynics who have allied with them.

The opening salvos have already been exchanged. A recent example was congresswoman Liz Cheneys backing for Anthony Fauci Americas doctor and her real men wear masks tweet which, among other things, provoked a fierce backlash from Trump and his loyalists. While this is playing out theres another strand of thinking that says it doesnt much matter. The Grand Old Party is toast. The alt-right rabbit hole down which it has dived will destroy it because, demographics.

They have been steadily shifting. Whites, from whom the Trumpist Republicans draw almost all their support, will soon lose their majority.

But its a dangerously complacent view to see the doom of the GOP in this.

Even armed with a majority in both the Senate and the House, which is quite possible, a new President Biden will face a very difficult situation. The pandemic has devastated the US economy and dealing with the aftermath will define the early part of his tenure.

However moderate he proves to be, he will face the massed ranks of Americas bellicose Conservative media, its army of conspiracy theorists, trolls, bots and pedlars of falsehoods. These are what Anne Applebaum, in her book The Twilight of Democracy would refer to as clercs, whom she identifies as having played a key role in the rise of various authoritarian populists around Europe (including one Boris Johnson).

A situation of high unemployment, global tension, and the fallout from the virus, will be catnip to them.

Joe Bidens tactic to date has largely involved keeping his head down and letting Trump lose the election for him. Its hard to argue with that because its working. But even if he doesnt have to raise his game prior to reaching office, hell surely need to shape up when hes in it.

If he cant, or wont, a restive public, disillusioned Democrats staying home, and our old friends gerrymandering and voter suppression, could deliver a Republican revival. Its happened before.

And if the Trumpists win the internal debate, which looks highly likely, and find among the number a smarter, more competent front man? One capable of finding a way to temper their message sufficiently to reduce the intensity of some of the demographic headwinds the party faces?

Thats when you have to worry. Trump has indulged in far right rhetoric, sent federal agents into cities like Portland to bundle peaceful protesters into vans, filled key positions with incompetent cronies, trampled over hallowed American conventions, pardoned his crooked friends, thumbed his nose at the US constitution when it suits. I could go on in that vein. And on and on.

Yet when push came to shove, when the pandemic held open the opportunity to really tighten the screw, as Viktor Orban did in Hungary, he didnt grasp it.

More recently, federal agents have withdrawn from Portland and he doesnt have the authority to postpone the election because that would require the consent of Congress and the Democrats control the House. Theres also his incompetence to consider, which, allied to his narcissism, has surely played a role in preventing him from doing worse than he has.

His successor, whoever that is (Tom Cotton? Tucker Carlson?), will probably be less self-obsessed, more skilled at avoiding pitfalls, better at reading the room, better at pushing the buttons necessary to further the sort of authoritarian project seen in parts of Europe.

Originally posted here:

Heated debate on the future of President Trump - Gulf Today