AiA in Atlanta wrote:
Whether Trump wins or loses it means big changes for the Republicans. If he wins it will shake up the party that much more and the fallout will be harder.
Depends who you mean by republicans. I mean the term has almost lost meaning now and there's really no good outcome for the republican party as we know it, regardless. By "republicans" do you mean the congressmen and senators? Do you mean the voters who nominated Trump? Surely you don't include Trump himself when you talk about "the Republicans"?
Trump's ascendancy is a result of the fact that a majority of votes, support and power are held by a few anti-establishment mavericks who are not so much aligned with the party as they are aligned against the democratic establishment. However, it's impossible to combine an anti-establishment maverick narrative whilst being a team player, so the party will remain fractured.
And holy fuck is it fractured! I mean we seriously have a situation where literally half of the republican senators and congressmen
refuse to endorse the republican candidate for president. Think about that - because that is really unusual. I'm not talking about Bernie votes failing to get enthusiastically behind Hillary - which has also happened, but the actual congressmen themselves are going to vote against their own candidate.
And he still might win! What does that say? I mean, what do you think will happen to those congressmen if Trump wins? The republicans, as we currently know them, will be no more.
On the other hand, if Trump loses by a little but and the GOP keeps the house then it will pretty much be business as usual for republican members of congress. They'll drop Trump as a figurehead but most will keep their jobs and their staff whether they endorsed Trump or not. After realising how vulnerable Clinton really was and what a missed opportunity this was (I mean under someone like Rubio they would have smashed it), they may even find someone they can paint as a "maverick" and quit cutting each other's throats before the next primary.