After the Republican 2016 Super Tuesday elections, the narrative centers on whether the party can stop Donald Trump. Since the 2016 election hotted up in summer 2015 I have posited that the Republican Party cannot survive its 2016 loss in the presidential contest. With the latest developments, I wonder whether or not it can survive Donald J. Trump.
The Republican Party horoscope
The Republican Party formed via breakaways from the Whig Party who wanted more done to end slavery. They also sought more influence for securing land beyond the Midwest, where the party was born. The first organizational meetings took place in February and March, 1854. Its first public act came when Horace Greeley promoted it by name during a speech, 6 July 1854, reportedly at 1:05 pm.
Has Trump already killed the Republican Party?
That Donald Trump, a businessman without a day in politics before he announced in June 2015, leads the Republican Party in the presidential primary speaks volumes. Whether we wins the nomination or not, he shows that the party may no longer be a thing. He quite deliberately avoids using either the party's machine or its money. The primary battle is between its establishment and Mr. Trump. Win or lose, it will be difficult to reassemble the Grand Old Party.
'This is not simply about Donald Trump. For Trump is not the result of forces which will come and go, but of a deterioration within the Republican Party that has been accelerating for years. The GOP has become a Frankenstein monster, assembled from dysfunction, demagoguery, myopia and myth, nurtured in a fever swamp where lies and hysteria kill off reason. Nothing better will arise until you help drive a stake through its heart.'
An Open Letter to My Republican Friends
Mr. Trump can take over a well established organization because the party forfeited its credibility. It cannot erase the memory that its most recent president misled his country into an expensive war, crashed his nation's economy and flew over the catastrophically flooded parishes of New Orleans. Trump gained his followers' ears because who can ignore sixty plus failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act? People who vote Republican are looking for New Management.
Often, denial that astrologers associate Neptune with, works in ways that those in denial are the last to recognize their state. That they take a chance on a flawed businessman—Donald J Trump leaves a string of painful, shady business failures with his name all over them—demonstrates how far from reality they are willing to stray.
The real denial of the Republican Party
After the 2012 loss to Barack Obama, the Republican Party released its “autopsy” of what went wrong. One of its most memorable items advised reaching out to minorities. Another recommended higher sensitivity to women's wants and needs. Does it sound like anyone during their numerous debate read the memo?
The advice comes because the Republican Party continues as one which favors mostly older Whites. It continues to hide behind its “We're not really racist”, or “ we are only protecting women”, justifications. It continues to be the party of 1980s trickle down economics and John Wayne war fantasies. It no longer cohesively knows what it stands for because for so long it has stood against policy, change, government, minorities, gender equality, take your pick.
We know that Republicans named themselves the guardian of conservatism. This boomerangs because too obviously became about how George W. Bush used his position to play out an Oedipus issues in Iraq, for instance. How does anyone hide that the Republican congresses during Obama's terms have been among the least productive in US history? Is Republican conservatism figuring out ways not to show up at work? Everyone agrees that the Republican Party is out of step and more simply, broken, except Republicans.
Who is in denial?
Since Richard Nixon made a deal with the Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond to bring White Southern voters into the Republican Party the party has pursued a strategy of division. It even has a name: The Southern Strategy. One of its major characteristic is its hushed nature, as detailed by party strategist, Lee Atwater.
'You start in 1954 by saying ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘Nigger.’ That hurts you. It backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights and all that stuff and you get so abstract. Now you talk about cutting taxes and these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that’s part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded, we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. Obviously sitting around saying we want to cut taxes and we want this, is a lot more abstract than even the busing thing and a hell of a lot more abstract than nigger nigger. So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.'
Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
Donald Trump twists this abstraction to a logical extent. The Republican Party created the reality show monster it now fears. More precisely, it created those who support his (non)message. His popularity comes down to an appeal to those who fear the browning of America. Make America Great Again cannot help but echo the divisions on which the United States was built, thrived upon and continued down to our time. It is a division on which the Republican Party was formed. His slogan is very reminiscent of the unspoken sentiment Mr. Atwater admitted to in 1981.
Unspoken rules, assumed roles feed off the nebulous nature of Neptune. Deception breeds deception.
Neptune, however is not just about delusion, deception or lack of form. Its positive manifestation sacrifices for the greater good, succeeds via relinquishing control and through more profound knowledge of self. Neptune's way eschews ego and in your face tactics. Neptune seeks universal love
I think it is quite clear where I am going on this. The Republican Party with transiting Saturn square radix Neptune, transiting Neptune square radix Saturn and at the edge of its first Neptune Return avoids the most obvious cure: a thorough, serious, humble effort to figure what the Republican Party is and what it stands FOR. US conservatism, for the sake of all, can heal itself by emulating the humble strength exhibited by one of its most influential members, Abraham Lincoln.