(Post trimmed down to the paragraphs I wanted to focus my reply on.)
I have said before, I am not fond of the neoconservatism embraced by Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger but I adore the fact that they both have a pare of brass balls the size of cannon balls and should be celebrated because of that fact alone (and reelected as well). However, they will not be the ones to wrest control of the party from Trump. Were any populist or nationalist to come along, go hard against the media, multinationals and the Democrats aggressively and also stand up to and oppose Trump, Trump would be yesterday's news almost instantly.
This is the peril for the populists and nationalists, because at the end of the day Republicans want power and the risk becomes if some populist or nationalist doesn't step up and show some balls, eventually the party could just default to the old guard neocon types in a scenario that I warned about simply because it is tired of losing. I have warned about this scenario in posts responding to BG-NY and it emphasizes why they need to get beyond Trump especially. It also illustrates why Trump is harmful to his own movement's long term success and longevity, because all of the big Trumpists are a combination of craven opportunists and cucks and they are all cowards and no one will ever take them seriously as leaders.
I think you are gravely mistaken if you think your party will ever see any real recovery from Trump. The advent of Trump has destroyed the GOP's facade. It will never be a party for workers who are not white, ostensibly Christian, and predominantly men. It will never be a party for a country that is not dominated by white, purportedly Christian, men.
That said, I think you are on to something when you mention the possibility for a successful politician who actually opposes the status-quo, pro-corporate establishment (what Scottish SF author Charles Stross calls the
Beige Dictatorship). Our country and government have, in many very real ways, failed. (At distributed prosperity, education, corporate regulation, justice, basic governance, morale, national vision, at
leadership, and even at successfulyl administering our globe-spanning hegemony. The "American empire" runs on self-interest of the powerful and inertia, which I think makes for a brittle combination under stress.) And our current systems and elites show little inclination or ability to make meaningful and ultimately necessary changes.
A politician who can successfully tap that energy (and not Donald Trump and the GOP's racist, ignorant charade, nor Obama's soaring rhetoric and hollow follow-through) will be riding a political tsunami of massive proportions. And that worries me. because there is so much untapped distrust, anger, and desperation, that there are no guarantees the cure will
not be worse than the disease. Donald Trump demonstrated how weak the safeguards of our rights and Republic are. A more competent man, given the exact same circumstances, would be a dictator now.
And I don't think dictators ever turn our well. Not even if I agree with their motives and goals.
Backing the Democratic Party against Trump and his Republicans was an easy choice, because the Trumpublican party is fractally awful, and worse than the Democrats on any apparent or conceivable measure. (More abusive, more authoritarian, more bigoted, more corporate, more destructive to the rule of law, more incompetent, etc.) Maybe I'm being too optimistic, and it really is just the racism, and an honestly populist candidate would get
less support than Trump. But if I'm not, we could be easily looking at a future where someone with more genuine appeal to credible grievances with the economy, the justice system, and our system of government could roar into power on an anti-establishment wave, but then be far worse than Trump for our democracy (and anything much worse than Trump will kill our ailing Republic).
tldr; I think there are a lot of people with real grievances, not just the imaginary ones Republicans whine about. But I worry that it will be all too easy for our failed establishment to be replaced by something that is actually far worse. And I don't have any answers for that right now.
edited: added a rather key "not" (that hopefully was apparent from context) to my post
