Will the GOP revert back to neoconservatism once Trump passes away or retires? Dr. Steve analyzes this as part of his conversation with TurleyTalks Staff Writer Conrad Franz!
-The GOP operators may revert back for awhile but the voters are TRUMPIST
-The rural vs. urban birthrate gap is growing dramatically!
-Just look at the local activists vs. the Mitch McConnell’s
Conrad: The Trump DeSantis war is going to be the defining point of the 2024 Republican primary. But ultimately, regardless of what happens eventually Donald Trump, he is a mortal man, will die or retire from politics in some regard. Do you think that when that day does finally come that the GOP, at this point, is more poised to ascend as a Trumpist party or revert back to the fiscally conservative socially liberal model with the Tea Party being the vanguard of anything conservative/in line with America first values?
Dr. Steve: Yeah, yeah, go the way the Tories into blithering irrelevance, right. Well, that may happen for a season. No question, they’re not called the stupid party for no reason. But no, the demographics are all moving in a thoroughly rural, nationalist, populist, re-traditionalist direction. I mean, populations in rural counties have always had more children than cosmopolitan, liberal populations but that gap has grown astronomically just over the last decade as the urban metro areas just embrace liberal lifestyle values all the more and see their numbers decrease accordingly. Back in 2007 the discrepancy between birth rates among rural and cosmopolitan populations was 5%. Discrepant, but not huge. That was back in 2007. Today, it’s near 15%. It surged 300% in a decade. So scholars recognize that rising birth rates among more rural, religious folk and declining birth rates among secular cosmopolitan folk are already remaking and recalibrating the nation into a far more conservative religious landscape? These are the dynamics that gave us Trump in the first place. I don’t know if Trump could have run…I mean, Pat Buchanan tried back in ‘92, ‘96, and 2000 but the demographics weren’t there yet. We were still a thoroughly cosmopolitan Republican Party. We are now a rural Republican Party. And we’re seeing the shift in the Electoral College much, much more towards those rural areas, especially with de-urbanization and so many people leaving the cities. Baltimore is now under 600,000 for the first time in the century. LA and San Francisco are losing more than than or going out. Same with Chicago and New York. That doesn’t mean the idiots that run the Republican Party aren’t going to make bad choices but it does mean that those choices have a terminus point, just given the dynamics that are happening that eventually will come to redefine both parties in the long term.
Conrad: I think we may have to bear a presidential cycle where there’s no one that good but broadly speaking, I think the real fight, and you and I have talked about this before Steve, is actually going to be within Trumpism itself. It will be between who you just talked about these rural people like in Shasta County, CA and these people that have demographically risen up and now are actually taking institutional control of these places for the first time in awhile. Those people versus your Elise Stefaniks, your more perhaps New England populist type that… I mean, they’re just not very conservative, but they are perhaps anti woke in some ways and they have a lot of influence with Trump too. So I think a big fight is actually going to be between those two camps of the Trumpist wing if/when Trump wins.
Dr. Steve: And I think we’re seeing that a bit with the DeSantis Trump rivalry, which right now doesn’t even look very fair. I mean, Trump has a double digit lead in every single state more or less at this point in the primary.
Conrad: Let’s not forget Ted Cruz won Iowa. So Iowa has proven it’s not as much of an indicator as it used to be.
Dr. Steve: That’s right. And they’ll have to repent of that just like their vote for Dukakis!
Conrad: They love Trump now. The white majority in Iowa…that’s one of the biggest shifts of any demographic in recent memory.
Dr. Steve: Same with West Virginia! I mean, Joe Manchin is a Jurassic hangover. Once he’s gone I don’t think you’ll ever see a Democrat in West Virginia again.
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