America’s Conservatives: Who will they vote for once MAGA goes down in defeat?
On thinking about the policies, judgements, actions, and betrayals since the Republican party and MAGA leaders took power in January 2025, I must talk about all the ways that America’s conservatives look out only for themselves. I was raised inside the ideology fundamentalist Baptist churches in the 1950s through 1960s and began ministerial training in a fundamentalist Baptist college in 1972. I know what thinking like a conservative looks like. I also know that America’s conservative political party is not genuinely conservative. It is an anti-democratic, anti-worker, pro-oligarchy, anti-separation of church and state, and white Christian male supremacist enterprise.
Recently, I visited with a dear woman who once voted Republican – as I did in the 1980s and 1990s – but who is now so opposed to MAGA ideology and Donald J Trump that she votes mostly for Democratic candidates. However, her words have given me pause, “I think that Biden, when the Supreme Court would not allow a blanket forgiveness of all student loans, should not have erased the student loan debts of anyone who owes on them. It should have been everyone or no one.” Because I felt embarrassed that she was being unusually irrational and apathetic, I said nothing except, “I disagree.” For three weeks since that conversation, I’ve thought about one thing only: will she and millions of others return to voting for Republicans once MAGA and the far right loses its control of the political party?
This worries me. Once you recognize a cult like MAGA, you should acknowledge who gave it legitimacy, that its rise to power completely changed the Republican party. Yes, I agree that the first test of the party’s willingness to move toward the far right came with the election of Reagan on the backs of the new Christian Nationalist movement. But honest conservative leaders remained in the party for decades afterwards. The Tea Party and MAGA nailed the coffin on true, rational, empathetic conservatism within the Republican party. It was never a coincidence that a person like Trump – immoral, deceitful, irrational, inexperienced in leadership, of low intellect, cruel, and a white supremacist – could capture and control the party. Christian Nationalists saw a useful idiot without realizing the full extent of trump’s idiocy. Be careful what you wish for, Christian Nationalists, feels appropriate.
Trump could breathe his last breath on any day now; he’s in poor physical health at nearly 80 years of age. His mental health is worse. He is ugly and putrid on both the inside and outside. My point is that his death – or dismissal per the 25th A to his Florida sex motel – will not immediately change America’s right wing in state legislatures or in Congress. The Republican party has found its power among far-right oligarchs. America’s billionaire class is as anti-democracy as it can get without burning the Constitution and Bill of Rights in a White House ceremony. They own most of mainstream media, from conservative rant radio to the Washington Post and television stations like CBS. Their control of news and information is unprecedented in U.S. history. The average American adult reads at a fifth grade level – which doesn’t tell the whole sordid story. Americans read headlines, listen to podcasts, and consume television using Confirmation Bias. They want entertainment, not knowledge. The Republican oligarchy gives them a steady diet of entertainment. Would these consequences of having a SCOTUS and Congress in Republican control change quickly after Trump leaves the Oval Office? Of course not.
Texas and Florida are two fitting examples of the irreparable damages that Republican control of local legislatures causes. Their public schools are failing; their public universities must now adhere to right wing control of curricula; their residential and commercial building booms and rapid loss of agricultural lands are unsustainable; women must travel out of state to receive the best prenatal and post-natal care or to seek safe terminations; white evangelicals are raising their children to be America’s fascists carrying firearms and Bibles. These consequences of local oligarchs owning the state courts and legislators cannot change quickly.
The U.S.A. cannot recover quickly from the chaos and damage done in the last ten years. The Republican party owns the chaos and damage. They own it, they profit from it, they do not want to fix it.
The Republican party’s Conservatism looks like the South after the Civil War ended – homelessness, defeatism, defiant of federal authority, unwilling to help or share with the poor and minority populations among them, reliant on the wealth of progressive states, supportive of anti-government militia such as the KKK, rampant injustice and unfairness.
It looks like women who stay and become dependent on abusive relationships – cede power to the bullies; placate the powerful ones for a few trinkets and some freedoms; jealous of those who have independence and challenge themselves to succeed; blame The Others for all their own failures; insult and resist The Helpers.
It looks like America’s white fundamentalist and evangelical churches – shamelessly white male supremacist; selfish and self-centered; hypocritical; cult mentality; anti-science and public education; inhospitable; protects male power including men who are sexual predators; worships wealth and power.
The Republican party is not your grandfather’s Eisenhower Republican party. It is a criminal enterprise.
Two challenges have been consistently posted on social media in the last ten years. Republicans avoid these challenges, a very telling avoidance that suggests what the answers would be. 1) Looking back over 40 years, identify one legislation that was written and enacted by the Republican party, that empowered America’s workers and was broadly supported by America’s workers. 2) Looking back over 40 years, identify one legislation that was written and enacted by the Republican party, that empowered America’s families no matter what the families look like.
Will millions of voters who right now despise MAGA and Donald J Trump return to their GOP loyalty once MAGA and Trump are gone? I agree that the U.S. needs multiple political parties including conservative parties. We need the challenges and the checks and balances that multiple political parties with power in local, state, and national politics would create. However, the Republican party we have in 2026 must go down in defeat, wholly and finally. Millions of voters who return to it upon MAGA’s defeat will not reverse the fascism which this GOP embraces. Powerful people and organizations do not relinquish their power quickly or easily.
Am I worrying about something that will not happen because this GOP is rapidly suppressing and obliterating the rights and powers of all voters? Every hope I have of seeing a better, stronger democratic nation before I die has passed. Our doom was initiated 40 years ago and fortified in the last fifteen months, beyond repair. Please, never again vote for a Republican.
Who knows whether another Eisenhower conservative party can rise from the ashes of this GOP. I can hope for that.