The Great American Schism

About the only thing that Americans can agree upon these days is that they cannot agree about much.

The country is deeply polarized, and the political future is bleak absent some very real and very profound changes in the behaviors of both major political parties and their leaders.

Seventy-one million Americans voted for a man seeking to divide and weaken his country for the sake of his personal gain. 

Seventy-one million Americans voted for a man who turned mendacity into an art form and a fundamental element of his governance style.

And seventy-one million Americans voted for a man who turned the Republican party into a bit of a cult.

I believe that Republicans soon must take a major decision if they are to survive as an electoral force.

Do they continue to follow Donald Trump, and continue to tilt at the windmills of division in the hope that this will result in a White House triumph again in 2024?

Or do they find ways to channel Trump’s connection with seventy-one million voters into policy options that provide a real option for a majority of American voters and provide the Republican party with a chance to win the presidency as a twenty-first century political party?

The fact that the Senate appears to be tied and that Republicans have won more seats in the House than in 2018 underscores the fact that there is a real constituency for their policies. And the fact that a majority of state governorships and legislatures are in Republican hands demonstrates the strength of this party geographically.

Should a COVID-19 vaccine be produced and should the economy recover under the incoming Biden administration and should Biden’s politics of hope take root is there room for Trump to run again in 2024? Also, can he retain the support of his base and can the Republicans grow their popular and electoral college votes Republicans sustain this support and, in fact, grow it in the hope to win the White House? 

If Fox News continues to separate itself from Trump (as currently appears to be the case) will Trump and his followers have a mass media echo chamber that can effectively promote their views? 

Will Trump make good on his threat to create a new television network beholden only to him? That could well be.

Regardless of what Trump decides to do, Republicans must develop their strengths in order to move forward.

They must become a party that unites rather than divides. 

Republicans can reinvent themselves by re-packaging the essence of Trump’s policies – low taxes and protecting American workers from unfair foreign competition – and melding them with a forward looking policies that offer a positive alternative to Democrat proposals, a health policy that makes good on Trump’s unfulfilled promise to create a better health care system, a solid yet business friendly environmental policy to address climate change and accept it as an existential threat to humanity, and an educational policy that provides all Americans with an accessible education that will allow them to participate fully in the evolving economy.

Republicans will have to divest themselves of the current generation of leaders who have blindly enabled Trump for five years and find new leaders who can define 21st century conservative values in a positive light. Absent this, there is little chance for reforms to take hold and a new Republican party to rise out of the ashes of the old.

They need to appeal to the “up for grabs” undecided voters and conservative Democrats as well as their current solid base. Can they?

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Edición: Emilio Gómez