Lincoln would be a Democrat as would Theodore Roosevelt. Both were Progressives in their time.
The future of the Republican Party is either a huge shift to the left, like all the way to the left or to disappear and be replaced by another Progressive Party. Democrats would stay where they are and be the Center Right Party.
Political parties are not static. When Trump falls the Republican brand dies. They will reinvent themselves as a left wing party to regain the power they lost. It won't look anything like it does now by 2030.
The Republican Party shifted from left to right in the 1960s. There isn't growth on the right, there is encredible growth on the left. MAGA and Progressives already have a lot in common on policy ideas, a hate for government, that shift isn't that hard to do.
The Republican Party shifted from left to right in the 1960s.
Uh.
The last hurrah of leftism in the GOP was Teddy, and even he was mild compared to the radicals of the 1870s. The GOP has been the party of finance and big business since the 1880s, and of unregulated capitalism since the 1920s. That they recently became exceptionally racist as well (instead of merely typically racist) is little more than incidental to that.
Very much agree to disagree on that one. You're asking all the idiots who were told to hate woke people that they're now best buds with them. You're assuming the progressives are going to come down with a case of collective amnesia and not tell these people to jump off a cliff.
The party tried to move towards the center after Romney lost in 2012, but instead the alt-right seized control, pushed it even further toward the extreme right, and in the process put Trump in power for four years. The lesson the GOP's current leadership learned from that was to always double down, no matter what.
If Trump loses in 2024, I would put my money on the party falling into the clutches of out-and-proud white supremacists, collapsing from internal conflict between its various factions, or (probably) both.
They aren’t saying that current members become liberal. Eventually the radicals will move elsewhere and the remaining GOP will go closer to where they were 40 years ago.