“How do you change the Republican Party so that they appeal to more Americans again?”
First, they would have to WANT to change, and I don’t see that aspect at all.
Typical Trump dumb ass: “Trump got more votes than anybody but Biden. He’s number 1! We just have to wait for Biden to fuck up and then we’ll swoop in again! In the meantime, just don’t let the RINOs take over!”
Trumpers have absorbed the dead-wrong and Godawful message that Trump’s showing in this election proves that they do better with extremists than moderates.
This is blatantly false, but they absolutely believe this because Reagan, W. Bush, and Trump won while McCain and Mitt Romney did not.
[Although, of course, W. Bush and Trump didn’t actually win the popular vote their first time out, and Republicans have lost the popular vote 7 out of the last 8 elections, and Bush’s 2004 victory wasn’t by much more than Hillary beat Trump in 2016.]
But the actual numbers paint a different picture: John McCain’s staggering loss was largely due to how unpopular Bush was in 2008, and Obama has even said he wasn’t really running against McCain.
Then Mitt Romney was running against a popular incumbent Democratic President in the middle of a boom economy and no major disasters…yet he still came within 5 million votes of him.
Trump just became the first President since Benjamin Harrison to lose back-to-back popular votes, and Biden wound up beating him by a larger margin than Obama beat Romney in 2012 (over 6 million votes to 5 million votes).
For an incumbent Republican POTUS, it’s the worst loss since Herbert Hoover.
This is a horrible result for Republicans, but they’re framing it like a win because they did 5% better with African American males…What the f***?
Until they even accept that they’ve lost and lost big, I just don’t see them incentivized to change at all.
In 2008, the Republicans did an “autopsy” that said they needed to do better with Latinos, women, and moderates…then they created the Tea Party.
In 2012, they did a different autopsy that said the same thing…then they turned to Trump.
They know what the problem is (that they are viewed as racist, corporatist bigots with no legislative plans and a craven love of pollution and screwing over the middle class), but the bulk of their voters (or donors) refuse to let them change it.