Never Trumpers irrelevant?

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Is there a War on Centrists looming?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-empty-relevance-of-never-trump/ar-AAGehB7?ocid=spartandhp

The article in link pops up for a second then is replaced with a page not available right now notification, so couldn't read it.

They have no power and no prospect of gaining it.

In the scenario of Trump getting crushed republicans and conservatives as a whole will be repudiated and out of power possibly up to a generation. Which would be exactly what the never Trumpets warned about in 2016 coming true four years later then expected,

Do you mean "irrelevant" forever?

Or just "irrelevant" in the coming election?

If its the later I suppose they are pretty much irrelevent, unless you're suggesting that the GOP swap out their own leader for someone else (either as a candidate, or even as POTUS) prior to the election. Sort of an internal impeachment (sacrifice the man to keep the party in power).

Even if that were a "thing" that a party could do- I am imagining the GOP members of congress getting together and and just voting to swap Trump out as their chief CEO like they were a board of directors of a company- would they actually do that? If the economy, and Trump, himself, continue to go off of the rails, maybe. Maybe not. But I doubt that that's even a thing that they could do even if they wanted to. British political parties can probably do that-have their members of parliament just pick a new leader of their party, but not parties in the US congress.

The other scenario is allowing the election to take its course, and for someone who is not Trump to defeat Trump as the GOP nominee during the primary season, so that someone who is not Trump faces the Dems in the General.

Has a sitting president ever been defeated and replaced by another candidate within his own party during the Primary season prior to the general election? We have had a number of one term presidents who lost the general, but I cant think of any sitting president who didn't even get renominated as the face of their party to run in the general- except for ones who died or resigned prior to running (LBJ was the incumbent, but resigned from running in 68).

So AFAIK that just never happens either. So I don't see how GOP "Never Trumpers" would have any kind of way to replace Trump as their party's candidate for 2020.

While I would ideally like a multi-party system, until that day comes, we need the Dems to keep the GOP from going too far to the right, and the GOP to keep the Dems from going too far to the left.

However, because of changing demographics, the GOP has a lot more to lose if it can't break free of Trump, and could literally be voted out of existence.

I am also not against breaking up the "Big 2", if need be, the various factions would be their own parties, and there would be coalition governments. An American version of En Marche (Macron's party in France) would be the icing on the cake.

I honestly think the "Changing demographics will result in republican obliteration" is a mostly false hypothesis. This country has never been one-party dominated for longer than about 20 years, and even then the instances of domination longer than 4 years are rare:

1) After the defeat of John Adams, the federalist party was obliterated and Jefferson's democrats had control of the country for ~20 years when the whig party emerged and a different kind of populist democrat in Andrew Jackson caused internal divisions within that party.

2) After the Civil War, being saddled with alignment with the confederacy, the democratic party was greatly diminished in power. It would be just 12 years before democrat Tilden won the popular vote against Hayes. Republicans would win a lot of elections, but were no longer in complete control.

3) Under FDR the democrats controlled a great deal until world war II ended and their popularity faded.

If the democrats do gain complete control of the country, you can expect an opposition to emerge and demographics to break different ways.

The Federalists and the Whigs were obliterated so in an 1800s scenario republicans would have to be obliterated.

The Democrats were out of power after the civil war because many southern states were not back in the union and areas the south was under military occupation. Once reconstruction ended so did the Republican monopoly.

In the 60’s and 70’s similar to now many thought because of the protests and riots there would be a fundamental shift. The “generation gap” it was called. After the Vietnam defeat and Watergate republican irrelevance looked like a sure thing. Watergate turned out to be a bump in the road to a pro conservative realignment. It was misleading, the “new left”, “protest kids” were usually offspring of liberal parents. The offspring of Republicans might have had long hair and listened to rock music but they were generally conservative.

This time the generation gap is much more real. We have seen that since Obama was first elected. The millennial and Gen Z cohorts are much more diverse, socialist, have a more limited view of free speech and view climate change as an existential threat in need of radical remediation. The older cohorts grew up at time of career advancement if you work hard enough, individualism with many rock songs
promoting a do what you want to attitude. Iconoclastic did it my way people such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were both rich and changed the world were boomers,
. The younger cohorts grew up saddled with massive debt, a great recession, and dysfunctional government caused by boomer extravagance and individualism overreach. They are working in open office, team work environments. Trump is a bump in the road that might could last another decade or so.

Try a thought experiment.

What if Trump had sat out the 16 election?

What would have happened?

Presumably some conventional Mitt Romney type Republican would have been nominated.

The GOP would have won both houses of Congress like they actually did. Or I assume that they would have. Its possible our generic GOP presidential candidate would have won as well, even if was only via the electorial college vote, and not the popular vote. That's how it usually goes. One party runs the nation for eight years, and then the other party takes over for eight years.

But the GOP was already kind of floundering around.

Though the Dems also had their populist rebellion as well, led by Sanders. So both parties may have been in need of radical change.

A couple years ago I was willing to bet the GOP would reach out and try to recruit Hispanics (kinda like Nixon's southern strategy) so it could outflank the Dems. The Dems would continue to own the Black vote, so the GOP would own the vote of the comparable sized Hispanic vote. And we would see a browner face for the GOP. Exactly the opposite happened, and the GOP went nativist, and White supremist under Trump.