See, stuff like this is why it's hard to take your "hopium" seriously. This idea that the entire Republican party, which has a stranglehold on roughly half of the country's states and can't lose a presidential election by a landslide even by running the absolute worst human being on earth, is less than a decade away from completely dissolving; and which is based on absolutely nothing other than your own wishful thinking.
I never said dissolving: I said unelectable. In my scenario, during the entire length (and probably for a great deal longer.); you're going to have BOTH republican parties, screaming about being the true and only heirs to the Lincoln party, and between the two of them, pulling about the same number of votes as now.
But since it'll be impossible for them to get elected, because the actual conservatives won't have any meaningful way to discern themselves from the maga chuds, they'll be taking that number and splitting it between themselves. The republican vote, which is only enough to get people into power NOW with rampant cheating, gerrymandering and voter culling, will end up being actually representative of the population, and end up largely powerless to enforce their open bigotry when stuff like the interstate voting compact comes to pass... because they'll be unelectable. Still there, still screaming, still take corporate money in the hopes of a comeback.
You gotta understand: Even if trump never existed; the republican party only has the power it has now because
they stole it. They lied, cheated, purged the voter rolls, gerrymandered districts and worked over time to grandly, massively over-represent the average republican voter. Trump is sundering the party, and when he loses, he will cause it to split. Not quite right in half. The cult will hate the rinos that won't kiss trumps ass, and the normal ones will just want their party back. This was the only possible outcome, because some fascist power monger was always going to end up in charge, that was inevitable.
But this is the moment in which it all comes back. Years of abusing the system, of cheating, of rigging civil, social and justice systems to ensure they get away with it will slowly end. And it starts with trumps tantrum on jan 6th when he loses. It's going to really kick off with more childish whining of "rigged" "fraud", and probably some small level of violence. Trump will attempt another coup, another dog whistle to violence, but it won't work. Even his cult if abandoning him, he doesn't have the social or cultural clout he did four years ago. Sure he still has his absolute die hards... but how many will show up when he's spent the last fours years doing absolutely nothing but bleeding them dry?
"The status quo" is going to fight hard to stay on top, but it won't work this time. Change is a coming.
