Challenge: GOP splits three ways into pro-Trump, anti-Trump, and majority factions in 2024

[AltWorlder]

I find it amusing that even as Evan McMullin and other losers plot to make a new Trumpless Republican Party, there was all this buzz back in January about Trump taking the ball and going home so to speak and purposefully splitting the GOP by forming a Patriot Party.

Now neither idea is likely because as the LA Times op-ed points out, McMullin and co. are gormless losers, and as for the latter, Trump probably doesn't need to do that because most of the Republican base still loves him.

That said, how could in 2024 a situation happen where both parties appear, and the actual GOP?

My take: Succession secession crisis. Trump gets challenged by one of his would-be successors. DeSantis or Hawley or maybe some unknown GOP superstar who doesn't appear for another two years. This would have to be someone both popular enough to his base, and kooky enough to give establishment Republicans unease. Maybe they're vaguely pro-QAnon and are friendly with conspiracy theories at the expense of the establishment. So what ends up happening is that a moderate faction that's no bigger, in factor probably much smaller than the McMullin campaign (think Weld or even Walsh's campaign) goes for a third party run, while Trump loyalists reject the false claimant and prop up a Patriot Party. This would probably be a similarly fringe movement too. On the flip side, maybe the Patriot Party are ideological die-hards who claim that Trump has betrayed Trumpism or something.

I think I just wanted to find a way to engender a Democrats in the 1948 presidential election three-way split sort of situation, since it seems like there's already two such factions in the GOP.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I find it amusing that even as Evan McMullin and other losers plot to make a new Trumpless Republican Party, there was all this buzz back in January about Trump taking the ball and going home so to speak and purposefully splitting the GOP by forming a Patriot Party.

Now neither idea is likely because as the LA Times op-ed points out, McMullin and co. are gormless losers, and as for the latter, Trump probably doesn't need to do that because most of the Republican base still loves him.

That said, how could in 2024 a situation happen where both parties appear, and the actual GOP?

My take: (wow, this got long quick)

Trump invests a lot of  his time and attention in the run-up to the 2022 election, effectively turning it into a "Trump referendum". The Republicans take an unexpected savage beating at the polls as result, with the Democrats picking up five seats in the Senate and a strong edge in the House. A number of "winnable" GOP House seats are lost pretty clearly because the nominees Trump-endorsed candidates. The carnage brings support (and donors) to McMullin and others attempts to break away and launch a "Real Republican" Party, while the mainstream RNC still refuses to distance itself from Trump even a little. In Utah, after a fierce state convention battle, the "Real Republicans" take over the entire state party apparatus. A small but significant number of disgruntled Trump supporters start organizing  their own "pro-Trump Republicans" party.)

By mid-2023 the RNC, along with major donors and GOP Senate and House leadership are worried. An increasingly incoherent Trump is publicly talking like the nomination is his for the asking. Meanwhile the "Real Republicans" are playing the game well, have money and are having success in recruiting good primary candidates to try to oust Trumpers. (In some red states there's talk of running Real Republicans with no Democratic opposition.) The consensus among everyone but Trump supporters is that nominating him will be a complete disaster that the GOP will take a decade or more to recover from.

Hoping to avoid a fight, big name donors and classic Republican leadership try to negotiate a deal where Trump will get huge speaking fees and various other considerations in return for not-running and supporting the eventual nominee. Deal apparently reached, the 2024 Republican primaries kick off about as expected. The worst that happens is an early legal and rules fight over whether an anti-Trump Republican can run in both the GOP and "Real Republican" primaries.

As the GOP primary gets going, Trump gets peevish. He's getting less media attention, and claims the GOP isn't paying him what they owe him. Trump also doesn't like the way some primary candidates take shots at him and his record. Meanwhile damaging details of the various deals between the RNC and Trump are leaked. There's some question if they're even legal. "Real Republican" talking heads accuse the RNC of being sock-puppets for Trump, or selling out the interests of the party.

Desperately in damage-control mode, several prominent pro-Trump members of the RNC leave as the RNC stops payments to the former President. By late March, the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination is a Trump-style politican (let's call him "Senator Rotten") who describes the former President with lines like "the right ideas but the wrong man" to cheering crowds.

A furious Trump makes demands to the RNC for money and that they "make sure Rotten is out, or else". The demands leak, to the delight of "Real Republicans" and Democrats. "Sen. Rotten" denounces Trump, saying "the Republican Party belong to Republicans, not to Donald Trump" after clinching the nomination with strong victories in early April.

"We'll just have to wait and see about that," Donald Trump replies when he's asked about the line during the hastily-called press conference announcing his 2024 campaign as the presumptive nominee of the newly-declared America First Party. (The name is hastily changed in subsequent days to the not-much-better 'American Party'.)

As a result the 2024 Presidential ballot in most states looks something like this :

Donald Trump (American)
Joe Biden (Democratic)
John Kasich (Real Republican)
Ron Rotten (Republican)

The goal of both Republican parties is to somehow get the election into the House, where a hopeful Republican majority will be able to choose the President. Biden is confidently aiming for a win with a large EV margin. Donald Trump confidently says he's going to be re-elected, and any other result is rigged.

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

While a few percent either way (or really, like 1% for McMullin et al) might not seem like a lot, Biden won by less than 1% in the states he needed to break 270. I do think that there’s a chance of this though:

On the flip side, maybe the Patriot Party are ideological die-hards who claim that Trump has betrayed Trumpism or something.

I think this is more likely to break 1% than McMullin’s friends. It seems nuts, but I absolutely have no doubt that by 2024 there will be a market for “Trump betrayed Trumpism” despite Trump being, well, Trump. More so than the McMullin movement.

It would be an extra 1948 parallel if the GOP was running Trump, given that Dewey was their nominee twice in a row.

[Pericles]

Do we know how the Gary Johnson vote split in 2020? The Libertarian vote went down by 2 points in 2020, though of course it was a bit more or less in different swing states.

[pbrower2a]

Ordinarily, third party nominees hurt the incumbent, and they could hurt President Biden some in 2024 if they give people valid excuses to vote for that conservative or libertarian nominee instead of President Biden. Usually third-party nominees pull their supporters back into their Party four years after they defect and stay loyal. As an example, the states that went for Strom Thurmond in 1948 went to Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 and were generally among the few that voted for Stevenson in either Presidential election. In 1976, Jimmy Carter won the states that went for George Wallace in 1968.

Perot voters heavily went for Dubya in 2000 and 2004.

This is one of the Lichtman keys, and his keys have never applied to the disintegration of one of the two main Parties. Maybe to what may have looked like a potential disintegration, but we have never seen that in our lifetimes. Maybe three lifetimes going back to the time of the Whig Party.

The Republican Party still has plenty of genuine conservatives, but it also has its fascist wing. Fascists are not conservatives any more than Commies are liberals.     

[AltWorlder]

Desperately in damage-control mode, several prominent pro-Trump members of the RNC leave as the RNC stops payments to the former President. By late March, the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination is a Trump-style politican (let's call him "Senator Rotten") who describes the former President with lines like "the right ideas but the wrong man" to cheering crowds.

A furious Trump makes demands to the RNC for money and that they "make sure Rotten is out, or else". The demands leak, to the delight of "Real Republicans" and Democrats. "Sen. Rotten" denounces Trump, saying "the Republican Party belong to Republicans, not to Donald Trump" after clinching the nomination with strong victories in early April.

This whole thread is a thought experiment and not really likely, but it does seem like if J.D. Vance gets anywhere with his current campaign, he might turn into a Ron Rotten type figure. Someone who has co-opted Trumpist populism, yet with a solidly anti-Trump history and doubtful if the traditional GOP establishment class (the Real Republicans) would embrace if he continues to flirt with hard right Trumpism.

[AltWorlder]

I can kind of see that based exclusively on November 2022 viewpoint:

Trump: old-line, diehard, boomer MAGA with the remnants of Qanon and other fringe fanatics

DeSantis: pragmatic, establishment GOP, the "reasonable" choice

West: conspiracy theorists, zoomer and millennial far right memelords, anti-Semitic white nationalists and Christian nationalists, Nick Fuentes and Milo Y fans

Kan/Ye does maybe a smidgen better than in 2020 because the extremely online racists flock to him as well as the elusive Black Hebrew Israelite vote and assorted subcultures, as well as those who feel betrayed by Trump's disavowal of Fuentes.

Jury's still out on who gets the majority between DeSantis and Trump, but the latter definitely loses a segments of both his far right and his centerish right supporters.

[AltWorlder]

The above scenario means Trump gets flanked on both the left and the right.