The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, who suggests in her latest column that the Republican Party is only 53 years old — probably because she was a special assistant and speechwriter to President Ron; in her eyes, she was present at the Creation — writes that if Trump is nominated, if Republicans put him "over the top in the primaries," then ...
they will have ended the Republican Party.
Ms. Noonan underscores that "I don’t mean this rhetorically.... I mean it literally: The GOP will disappear as a party."
Exactly when this will occur is somewhat hazy, but allowances must be made for the miasmic fog of crystal balls. Mine itself often goes on the fritz, perhaps it needs new batteries. Anyway, Noonan proceeds to predict that some Republicans will drift to a third-party, others to the Democratic Party (hoping to "improve things there"), while "Trump supporters will stay on in a smaller, less competent[?] party."
Even then, however, "as time passes," the Trumpers will "get tired of losing and also drift on somewhere. But there will be no Republican Party after a Trump ’24 race." Here she does mean it figuratively.
But ultimately, "the vehicle of conservative thought and policy will be gone." Peggy is a bit behind the times, as that passage vividly reveals. Since her president — Reagan — the GOP's principal claim to conservatism — fiscal responsibility — has been self-molested, self-mauled, self-defaced and monolithically murdered time and again. To venture now that its conservatism will be gone is both ahistorical and just downright zany.
Noonan attempts a guilt trip: "Do you wish the Republican Party to disappear as a force in American political history?... Do you want to abandon America to progressive thinking? If you do, you are no longer a politically involved conservative, but more like a nihilist. It’s all ugly and corrupt, blow it up." If Trumpers were capable of feeling guilt or shame, this would work. If.
Turns out, the impetus for Ms. Noonan's Column of Anguish is promote ... Chris Christie.
God knows he needs the promotion. In the latest A-rated Fox News poll, he's at less than one-half percent, right next to a psychotic, Larry Elder.
Putting aside Christie's scandals as New Jersey governor, Noonan notes that his "executive talent" is "wholly undervalued, he had "big policy achievements," he is "politically gifted." He was a "golden boy" — once, she observes. And she's hoping to repolish his image.
"He is almost Trump’s equal in showbiz and his superior in invective, so he can do some damage. Would it be a suicide mission? I don’t know. But those kamikazes took out a lot of tankers. He has been told that if he takes down a bad guy and loses, he goes down in the history books, and if he takes down a bad guy and wins, even better. Seen this way he can’t lose."
With that I agree. Besides, what else does Christie have cooking for the remainder of 2023 and 2024? He might as well have some fun, kicking Trump around. Perhaps he can even convert his Fox News "*" — his less than one-half percent — into a "-" — which is absolute zero.
I also agree that eventually, under a Trump, the Republican Party will disappear, for want of sufficient voters. A party can sustain only so many national losses before it goes the way of the Whigs, the Greenbackers, the Populists and the Progressives. Whether it remains a player in American politics will depend on 2025, and its post-Trump evaluations of how to break free of its most poisonous life-forces.