While Republican successes in blocking legislation, judges and even presidential nominations may seem like the Party is on a roll, the reality is that the GOP is in the midst of an existential crisis as severe as any party has seen since the Whigs died out in the early 19th century.
Billionaire Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal is now openly calling them out in an editorial from the publication's editorial board itself:
"The United States desperately needs a Republican Party that is a sane alternative to the ruling Democrats who have lurched to the coercive left. On that score, Americans should welcome Mike Pence's stand Friday for constitutional principle on elections no matter its political cost."
While Murdoch's Fox "News" will continue to play the grievance game and hang onto Trump and his rube followers as long as they can to maintain audience share, the Journal's management knows that their more educated and higher-income readers have already seen through Trump's grifts.
This represents a huge crisis for Republican elected officials and the Party's leadership, particularly those who continue to play the Trump-humper card. When the money leaves, the Party is dead.
Pence standing up to Trump was either the beginning of the end of this incarnation of the GOP, or a warning flare that the final stage of the end of democracy in America has begun.
In the Ohio senate primary to replace outgoing Senator Rob Portman, the race has degenerated into a contest about who loves Trump and his racist fascism the most. As Alex Eisenstadt writes for Politico about a freak-out internal memo from within the campaign of JD Vance, the wealthy investor challenging perennial GOP candidate Josh Mandel:
"Vance's decline follows a $2 million-plus TV ad campaign from the Club for Growth and USA Freedom Fund, outside groups that are backing Vance rival Josh Mandel, which have portrayed Vance as an anti-Trump figure." (In reality, Vance has embraced Trump like a teenager mooning over a rock star.)
Both groups are billionaire-affiliated, so it appears that even among Republican billionaires there's a split between those favoring outright fascism and a return to a Reagan/Bush-style of embracing tax cuts and monopolies while pitching feel-good "morning in America" bromides to voters.
As this high-level schism plays out within the GOP, Republican politicians on the ground have stopped even pretending to hold or promote the values that were traditionally the mother's milk of campaigning:
