Why has there not been such a reckoning among conservatives and Republicans? This is a hard question to answer precisely because the Republican Party isn\u2019t one thing, and the incentives of right-wing media outlets such as Fox News or Newsmax are different from those of elected officials such as Sen. Mitch McConnell. But based on my own reporting and interviews with people who are studying the Republican Party closely, I\u2019d offer five (overlapping) theories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the simplest and most obvious explanation: The GOP isn\u2019t changing directions because the people driving the car don\u2019t want to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we think of \u201cRepublicans,\u201d we tend to think of either rank-and-file GOP voters or the party\u2019s highest-profile elected officials, particularly its leaders in Congress. But in many ways, the party\u2019s direction is driven by a group between those two: conservative organizations like\u00a0Club for Growth\u00a0and\u00a0the Heritage Foundation, GOP officials at the\u00a0local and state level\u00a0and right-wing media outlets. That segment of the party has been especially resistant to the GOP abandoning its current mix of\u00a0tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, opposition to expansions of programs\u00a0that benefit the poor\u00a0and an identity politics that centers\u00a0white Americans and conservative Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You could see the power and preferences of this group in the response to the Capitol insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the 2012 elections, prominent Republicans\u00a0sharply criticized Mitt Romney and his campaign. Democrats did the same to Hillary Clinton after 2016 \u2014 and sometimes\u00a0included former President Barack Obama\u00a0in their criticisms, too. For a political party to change direction, it nearly always has to distance itself from past leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or put another way: For there to be an autopsy, there has to be a dead body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To torture this \u201cautopsy\u201d metaphor even more: There\u2019s a good argument that the party is still very much alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Historically, parties have done more self-reflection and been more likely to change course when they\u2019ve hit electoral low points. In the 1988 presidential race, Democrats carried\u00a0only 10 states\u00a0and Washington, D.C., and that loss was their third consecutive failed bid for the White House. In 2008, Obama won the popular vote by\u00a07 percentage points\u00a0\u2014 Republicans\u00a0didn\u2019t even carry Indiana. So of course the parties were ready to rethink things after those defeats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It might seem odd that we\u2019re only now turning our attention to Republican voters, who may seem like the most important factor in keeping the party from shifting gears. I\u2019m not so sure. We have\u00a0a lot of evidence\u00a0that voters\u00a0tend to follow the cues of political elites\u00a0(as opposed to elites following voters). In other words, I suspect that if GOP elites, from national elected leaders to Fox News to local activists, had collectively broken with Trump and Trumpism after the Capitol riot, the percentage of rank-and-file Republican voters ready for the party to go in a new direction would have grown.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is some<\/em> appetite for change within the GOP. In those 2024 polls, at least a third of Republicans either were supporting a GOP presidential candidate other than Trump or were undecided. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In YouGov Blue\u2019s polling, only about 40 percent of Republicans identified themselves as \u201cTrump Republicans.\u201d A\u00a0recent survey\u00a0from Fabrizio, Lee and Associates, a GOP-leaning firm that worked on\u00a0Trump\u2019s presidential campaigns, found that about 40 percent of Republican voters didn\u2019t want Trump to continue to be a leader in the party. Those numbers don\u2019t necessarily mean that those voters want the GOP to change drastically. But there is a substantial number of Trump-skeptical\/ready-to-move-on-from-Trump Republican\u00a0voters<\/em>. But that sentiment isn\u2019t really showing up in the Republican Party\u2019s actions during the last three months \u2014 basically everything GOP officials in states and in Washington are doing lines up with the Trumpian approach. So what gives?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n for full topic please visit the source<\/p>\n\n\n\n