JD Vance has said he is ready to take on the presidency “If God forbid, a terrible tragedy happens” to Donald Trump.
In a wide-ranging interview with USA TODAY, the vice president said he was “confident” President Trump would see out the rest of his term, but added he has had a lot of “on-the-job training”.
He also insisted to White House Correspondent Francesca Chambers Trump was in “incredibly good health”, despite recent questions about the president’s physical wellbeing.
They may think that, but it doesn’t work that way. They need a singular leader to unite the base. Once that’s gone, they’ll fracture fast.
What comes next is probably closer to European liberalism. Better social safety net, but capitalism mostly goes on. The US doesn’t have a groundswell of support to be any more anti-capitalist than that.
Maybe. Fractured, sure, but I don’t think the Republicans collectively will be any less harmful without Trump. Congress and the governors will continue with the Project 2025 agenda under President Vance.
Some of y’all never been in a cult, and it shows.
No. What happens is they all tear each others throats out trying to be on top. Nobody wins. The GOP dies with Trump.
Ummm, have you been in a cult?
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Unless all of the rich megadoners die at the same instance, nothing will fundamentally change. We’re in a class war, not a Democrat vs Republican war. Trump may be the man leading the consolidation of power push today, but the reason that movement is working is the environment being ripe for the movement.
Trump dies and the minimum wage doesn’t go up, fox news doesn’t dissolve, and taxes on the rich sure as hell don’t start up. Nothing fundamentally changes, and with the state of all the fundamental and important agencies worsened and delegitimized things probably worsen significantly for those orgs and their services in the short term while power is redistributed, reconsolidated, and resolidified.
Trump dying would likely just be the temporary slow down of the currently inevitable decline. You’re right to say things get more chaotic and there is a large opportunity for things to improve or change - but believing the GOP disappears, and therefore we enter into a utopia, seems to ignore the underlying cause for their existence in the first place. The rich and powerful want to remain rich and powerful, and ideally become more so, at the expense of everyone else so they fund systems that further those goals.
This is the US.
They’ll politely forget and go back to pretending they’re the greatest nation in the world.
Yeah, it’d require him to name a successor that’s competent. A thing that will never happen. Trump has to be the smartest in the room, you think room temperature idiots like that can stop the cataclysm?
Ahhh, but you forget two things.
One, cults usually outlive their founders, even cults of personality.
Two, Unitary Executive Theory. The Trump admin has been working overtime to try and figure out ways to rule by decree, and I think they’re absolutely willing to Hail Mary with Vance. If Trump dies, I can see them trying to quite literally just decree laws and dare the various, rapidly dwindling levers of power to stop them.
Nope, they don’t outlive their founders much. The few that do are exceptions.
There are cults of personality and cults of idea. Every once in a while, a cult of personality can outlive its founder by turning into a cult of idea. Mormons and Scientology are examples. This is hard to pull off, though. Most end up more like the Oneida cult, where its founder fled the country and it fell apart almost immediately.
The cult I was in, Jehovah’s Witnesses, was never really a cult of personality (IMO). Russell didn’t exercise particularly strict control over the group to begin with. Rutherford clamped down, causing a few splinter groups (a few of which are still out there). He turned it into a cult of ideas, and it outlived him without much issue.
As for unitary executive theory, it’s irrelevant. It only works for Trump because the congressional GOP doesn’t do anything against him. There is strong, aggressive debate among themselves, though. They could barely agree on a Speaker. Vance would weigh into it without the benefit of a cult of personality behind him.
I have a hope that the scramble for power will break the machine, but not much.
Agreed. This isnt a collective conservative front like the Tea Party. This is worship of a singular figure head. Once he’s dead it’ll crumble
That really depends on how deep the rest of them have gotten their claws into the controls
Maybe Trump won the election fair and square but do you think they won’t try to rig for JD Vance? With all the other shit they’re doing grabbing the headlines, what kind of “boring” administrative shit have they fucked with that the press is too busy to even cover?
They will become “The Fractured But Whole”