The Collapse and Reformation of the Modern Republican Party and the Opportunity for Revolutionary Change

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American history teaches us that political parties collapse and reform over time. The last major collapse and reformation was in the election of 1860, when the Republican party made its first run for national office under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln. In that election, Abraham Lincoln fought with moral clarity and precision against the evils of slavery in a way that no politician had ever done before. Lincoln was elected president even though he only garnered 40% of the vote in the election of 1860. The reason why he won was because the moral force of his argument split the Democratic party into factions. These various factions included a southern Democrat party which was more unapologetically pro-slavery, a northern Democratic party which endorsed primarily slavery on political grounds and avoided the moral questions, and a Constitutional Union candidate. Because Lincoln's moral argument split his political opponents into warring factions, they couldn't develop a consensus and he won.

After this election, the Democratic Party began its long period in exile until after the collapse of the second wave of the Ku Klux in the 1920s and '30s. Then, in the post-World War II era, we saw the rise of the modern Democratic Party under FDR, which then ultimately adopted a pro-civil rights attitude under LBJ, and formed the basis of the current conventional Democratic Party.

Our current crisis in the modern Republican Party can be traced back to the tenure of Richard Nixon, who made an intentional decision to exploit racial divisions in the wake of the Civil Rights Act passed by President Lyndon Johnson. This was Nixon's so-called “Southern Strategy”. The person who helped to guide Nixon in this racist Southern Strategy was a man by the name of Roger Ailes, who later formed Fox News. After the Nixon presidency collapsed, Roger Ailes became a political operative who continued to use race-baiting, corporate propaganda to divide the American people.  Fox News mastered the use of fear, propaganda, and manipulation to get voters to vote with the Republican Party, vote against their own interests, and create an elite, ruling class of the ultrawealthy. There were times when Republicans resisted the overt racisms of the Ailes strategy, such as when they nominated people like Bob Dole, Mitt Romney and John McCain. But on the whole, the pro-corporate, racist, fear-based approach of Fox News came to dominate the Republican Party and was a key driver of our present income inequality, as millions and millions of “conservative” voters committed economic suicide by voting for politicians whose only goal was to enrich the elite at the expensive of regular Americans.

Trump stepped into the picture in June of 2015, with his famous “golden elevator speech” in which he overtly adopted the fear-based tactics of KKK and Hitler to gain political power. Trump capitalized on the economic anxieties of the day (which were primarily created by the Republican Party’s prolicies of income inequality starting with Ronald Reagan) and deceived the People by convincing them that these problems were caused by immigrants; this is the same playbook that Hitler and others had done before him.  As we know, it worked.

In his first term, Trump was constrained in his exercise of power by many conventional Republican political forces, who historically have been more pro-immigrant.  Indeed, Ronald Reagan was extremely pro-immigrant. He signed the Immigration Reform Control Act of 1986 and made important and powerful statements about the role of immigrants in his farewell address. Ronald Reagan was not afraid of immigrants, and he did not use fear-based rhetoric around them. He understood their great value to American society. That element of the Republican Party continued to persist in Trump's first term, limiting the degree to which he could actually carry out his hidden, tyrannical agenda.

However, in his second term, Trump surrounded himself with henchmen with no moral scruples to do his bidding, emboldened by a weakened and cowardly Republican Party which had lost its moral compass completely.  As we have seen since January of this year, Trump has pursued his relentless tyrannical agenda with a vengeance against immigrants and the American people.

Finally, in recent months this has reached the tipping point, and now you see common sense and traditional conservatives fighting back for the first time, combined with the fact that the unfortunate, and tragic, and reprehensible assassination of Charlie Kirk has split the MAGA base into warring factions. This is typical of movements that are based on fear and hatred, such as Turning Point, which is essentially a version of KKK-lite.  Because such movements are not founded on reason and a positive sentiment for others, once their leader is gone, they tend to rip each other to shreds and the movement falls apart from the inside out. This is what happened in the second wave of Ku Klux violence in the 1920’s and 30’s, and is what we're seeing now, leading to the crumbling of MAGA, and its replacement with “America First”, which is not controlled by Donald Trump and is much weaker at the moment.

While this is going on, we are also seeing the disclosure of the Epstein files, due to the courage of a small number of Republicans in the House who actually have a moral conscience, primarily led by Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Because of their fearless advocacy, the truth about Epstein and Trump is finally coming out. As we are learning, Trump is at the heart and center of this scandal, and in fact, is deeply, deeply involved at a level that will shock those who have previously supported him. Already, 60% of Americans say that Trump likely knew about Epstein's crimes when he was friends with him.  This number will climb over time, and I predict that in the not-too-distant future we may see above 70% of Americans believing that Trump knew about Epstein's crimes the whole time he was with him, and may have participated in those crimes as well.  

As public sentiment turns against Trump, this will  lead to the downfall of Donald Trump, as the cost of continuing to support him will become too high in the face of the overwhelming moral disgust he attracts, his tyrannical actions, and the fact that the MAGA base is fracturing and splintering into pieces. All of these forces over time will make it nearly impossible for any sane and decent American to support Donald Trump, and only the most deranged minority will continue to aid him.  

Rational Republicans will soon come to understand that their futures as political candidates are deeply imperiled by Donald Trump, unless they cut ties with him and denounce him. As this process continues, and as the Epstein disclosures continue to unfold, more and more people will openly abandon and defy Trump. This presents an opportunity for a unique political alignment in 2026.

For myself as a candidate, I am pursuing revolutionary politics as opposed to conventional ones. Based on my experience thus far as a candidate, talking to people, talking to voters, and understanding the issues, I do not think that conventional Democratic Party politics are going to get us out of the challenges we face.  These challenges are very, very severe crises and problems that we haven't seen in nearly 50 years, since the economic collapse of the 1970's.

I believe we have a brief window of time to change course and get the United States of America on a much better track.  This will require revolutionary paradigm shifts on the issues of income inequality, affordability, healthcare, and the national debt.  There are many other issues that are important as well, such as immigration reform, climate change, energy policy, education, and artificial intelligence. However, these four core elements of income inequality, affordability, healthcare, and the national debt, must be addressed immediately; if they are not, we will likely experience a catastrophic collapse of the American system. I say we avoid that. I say we embrace revolutionary change now and put America on a path to success in the 21st century.