The future is bleak for the GOP. They have a generation of kids doing active shooter drills. They have a generation of kids with a racist president. They have a generation of kids watching as they deny science and block concerted action against climate change. They have a generation of kids seeing other kids in cages, while they argue they shouldn’t have toothbrushes. They have a generation of kids whose parents worry about their healthcare, whether they can afford insulin, whether a crazy lawsuit (or a Senate vote without Senator McCain) will tump the apple cart.
The future of the GOP will depend upon outright abjuration of the current party, which will take wide swaths of policy (but not all) with it. It’s clear enough that if you wanted to turn off a whole generation to your party forever, you couldn’t build a better party to do it than today’s Republicans.
None of which is much consolation to the kids who have to grow up listening to a racist president, or who will have to endure a worse climate scenario than they would if we had responsible conservatives in the US. They will be more likely to repeal the 2nd amendment than to tweak it or be satisfied with gun safety laws, which isn’t the best outcome.
In general, having two (or more, but at least two) useful parties is always healthy. It keeps the majority party responsible, and it keeps the minority party relevant enough to temper the worst instincts of the majority. But the Republicans, railing against socialism, are pushing for a future where they are powerless to stop the very socialism they fearmonger about. They are, obstruction by obstruction, denial by denial, racist tweet by racist tweet, ceding the future to the Democratic party.
Even the children who will inevitably dislike the Democrats will be more likely to splinter off into the Libertarians or Greens or some new third parties, which will never have enough strength to respond. The long-term strategy of the Republicans is to make sure they never need a long-term strategy. Poisoning a whole generation against them is a safe bet. They won’t need to solve any problems circa 2050, because they will have dwindled into irrelevancy.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There is the idiocy about demographics as destiny, that California being a “blue state” is caused by who lives there rather than the policies that are put forward. There’s all this woe that Americans don’t fuck enough, aren’t having kids. But the Republicans aren’t putting forward policies to change that (and I don’t mean some Handmaid’s Tale policies, either).
How many damned autopsies from elections would they need before they actually embrace change? They are the victims of campaign funding capture that is detrimental to their own future. The check writers want to see not electoral performance but stump performance, dictating a bad platform that calls for gag rules and walls and tax cuts and little in the way of compassionate or reasonable policy.
The modern conservatives will have to break that mold. They should caucus with the Democrats long enough to see it smashed. To get real campaign finance reform, to get real gerrymandering reform, to get real voting reform. To tune-up the system in a way that makes elections about ideas again, and then they can begin to offer conservative shades of policy instead of Day-Glo murals of doom.