No really.
In the post-mortem of Tuesday's election, the Ed Gillespie story is as telling as any story there is. Gillespie was never known as an alt-right Republican prior to being pegged for Virginia's governor race but left looking more alt-right than Trump himself. While we may never really know if Gillespie was more of a victim of his embrace of Trump or of his disdain towards him since the race he ran seemed to involve a fair dose of both, we know the exit poll data and it isn't positive for the GOP.
While Trump himself criticized Gillespie for not being Trumpian enough and losing as a result, I am left to wonder what sign should we look towards as it relates to identity politics if we hope to consider the Republican candidate in 2018 and moving forward? This is not a question for the Republicans that vote (R) because that is all they know to do. I'm referring to those (R)'s that really appreciate their new-found access to healthcare and don't really wish to risk their lives on a party loyalty line.
As it turns out, most of the people around the nation were inspired on Tuesday by the need to save their own healthcare against the wiles of the (R)'s who are destroying it only because they don't really know what else to do. If you predict healthcare's implosion, sometimes you must also be willing to pour a little gas on the sparks to speed things along. Despite Trump's slashing of the budget to market ACA enrollment, record numbers of Americans are enrolling anyway.
Now the (R)'s are trying like crazy to scratch the back of rich people while making average Americans think it is their back being scratched. Two things that can no longer be confused is the feeling of a political back rubbing or the efficacy of a bill not scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). America never knew what those letters meant prior to the Trumpian takeover. Now, they don't stop to listen to your idea until the CBO can delineate what is in it for them.
It is not impossible to imagine the GOP accomplishing some form of a tax bill, but it is close to impossible to see it achieving anything substantive for average Americans. Trickle down never really has fulfilled its promise, and ObamaCare is more hopeful than whatever existed before. The best I can tell, the GOP is mostly stuck with the idea of building a wall because even a ban on assault weapons is supported by the majority of America, gun owners included.
In fact, doing something about our broken immigration system has had majority appeal in America from way back when Eric Cantor was still the Speaker of the House. The Obama era push and catastrophic weather events have most Americans waiting on a far-reaching infrastructure bill that seems to need a huge wave of collapsed bridge deaths to finally get approved for some odd reason.
By virtue of identity, the only elements that uniquely come to mind when thinking of today's Republican party are titled tax plans, Muslim hatred, "blood and soil" and tiki torches. I know a lot of really good people who still consider themselves Republican have never considered marching with a tiki torch and are upset that they are now being connected to such evil, hatred and our twit of a president. Yet, what else is there to help us identify a modern day Republican?What the Twitter-in Chief has made abundantly clear is that the GOP has lost its way enough to be easily taken over by a twit. Surprisingly, plenty of twit love remains despite enduring a highly embattled presidency, but it seems there was not enough to have made a difference this past Tuesday.
The best I can tell, the GOP will soon need to adopt progressive policies as their own in order to offer ideas that reasonable people consider reasonable. Walls and rolling back healthcare, and tax cuts for rich people and unresolved immigration questions, and climate denial or broken accords and partnerships, or LGBTQ bans, Muslim bans but repeal of the ban on the mentally ill getting guns, is simply not reasonable anymore.
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