I don't think the GOP has moved on from Trumpism, even if Trump weren't to run in 2024. A lot of his policies are far more popular with republicans than Bush Jr/McCain/Romney era platforms. Those three were globalists, just like democrats.

This modern era is more pro American business instead of increasing trade deficits, helping out hard working farmers, focused on economic warfare rather than military kind with our enemies, more focused on abortion/criminal justice reform (and less LGBTQ and Stem Cell like 2000's conservatives), making our allies pay to defend themselves more and depend on us less, trying to help out the middle class more than the previous iteration of the GOP, and I don't think that's going away anytime soon. Even if Trump doesn't run/win in 2024, I think he is going to have a long term impact on policy much like Reagan did, even moreso after he passes away just like Reagan did. 

I rarely came across people that hated on Trump for his policies, when broken down. It was almost always his personality they despised.

I probably should clarify that when I say move away from Trump, I am talking about the man not the policies.  The actual policies are actually pretty much in line with the GOP constituents and I agree that its popular among republican.

In that case, I think the only way the GOP moves on from Trump is if Trump doesn't think he can win in the general election and chooses not to run. If he runs, I think he will win the republican nomination at least for one more presidential run and win it rather easily. I'm more curious about what happens in 2028 if he wins the nomination in 2024 but loses the general election (which I think only happens if Biden doesn't run in 2024 and the democrats select a more moderate replacement, perhaps a Manchin/Sinema ticket, could you imagine? lol).

I am not ready to make a statement on if Trump would win the GOP nomination just yet until I see the field.  As for winning the whole thing again, hmmm, usually when you lose, you never get a second opportunity.  I definitely do not see him ever getting back into the President seat again but anything can happen.  I still believe there is a love hate relationship with Trump when you leave outside of his base and it will be interesting to see who declare themselves to run for President in 2024 for the GOP.  2024 is a while away and a lot can happen between now and then. 

I know one thing for sure, Trump cannot take another lost either from a primary or presidential campaign so we will see if he is more comfortable getting paid then trying to get back in that Presidential seat.

You know, I have thought that Manchin is making a run for President with the moves he has been making lately.  I doubt he would pick Sinema probably a more centrist Dem to counter his total right lean but it has crossed my mind a few times.  A lot of moves Manchin been trying to make appears like he is attempting to elevate himself for a push.

Conversation? In this thread?

Surely you jest! I got banned here before for making a statement that justified why the likes Kyle Rittenhouse showed up that night with guns. Mod said I was inciting violence!

Speaking of which, the prosecution team for the Kyle Rittenhouse case is lookin good! They're a good source good of comedy. Still, regardless of how much they look like stupid monkeys wasting time, I'm not holding my breath that a conclusion that makes sense will happen. Just like what happened with the "Benevolent Saint George Floyd" case.

Funny. I remember people here seemed to have labeled Kyle as this vile white supremacist who went out just to shoot """protestors""" or something. People were saying he should be charged for murder and that it wasn't self defense. It's the whole reason why I got into that argument and banned anyway.

Regarding left wingers not putting George in the pedestal, must be nice having a filter to not see it. Let's just blame conservatives again. For all I remember of this shameless charade the "left leaning" media tried to paint the guy as if he was some plain victim of random police violence and that Derek Chauvin was this racist guy who wanted to kill random black people. I remember them using a footage of his kid saying, "We did it. Daddy changed the world!". People made a memorial for this guy. Made statues of him. So don't tell me people never used this guy as a political icon and put him in a pedestal as if he's some symbol of justice.

Also, regarding the case itself, the bodycam video was already out there for a long time. I would be surprised if you have never seen it or may have chosen not to see it. Derek Chauvin himself said countless times to George Floyd that he wasn't gonna shoot him(granted he complied and did nothing stupid). Derek placed his gun back to his holster. Quite confident for a man that was painted to supposedly be out there to kill black people given the difference in height and all. Regardless of whatever Derek did, long before that, George Floyd was already showing erratic behavior. Let's just ignore the fact that he was under the influence of drugs. I mean this whole case dismissed the possibility of an OD and said it was due to depravation of oxygen due to Derek Chauvin putting his knee on George Floyd's neck for a long period of time. They also ignored the fact that George was already saying he couldn't breath and personally asked to put him down to the ground. So obviously, something was wrong there but let's just sweep it under the rug.

Now am I saying that Derek Chauvin did nothing wrong? Absolutely not. I think calling a paramedic would have been a way to go but then that would require the police to have full control over the suspect and the situation. Meaning George not thrashing around and there are no threats in the vicinity. Given the line of work, you could only imagine the number of bad actors these guys have to deal with. But let's just ignore that. Police definitely do not need training. They do not need more funds. Let's just abolish them. I mean it's not like Ilhan Omar just blamed the spike in crime on the Police saying they weren't doing their job. Given her background I'm sure she would never support the movement to abolish the police. Politicians like her need the police for protection! :^)

I believe what Machiavellian is trying to get at is the fact that Republicans are faring better at the ballot box today without Trump being president than they ever did during the Trump years. Democrats made electoral gains in the 2017 off-year elections, the 2018 midterm elections, the 2019 off-year elections, obviously the 2020 presidential election, and won the Georgia Senate run-offs in January of this year as well. And then last Tuesday this pattern suddenly reversed.

I also feel like saying that Trump endorsed the Republican candidate for the office after he was already nominated is sort of like calling Joe Biden a "Bernie Sanders Democrat" because Sanders endorsed him after he'd already effectively won the party's nomination for president. Only the other party does that. The same basic principle applies here. Personally, I have the Republican Party mentally divided into two main factions: the Trumpists and the Reaganists. Larry Elder I saw as a Trumpist. Crushed. Didn't even make any inroads on Gavin Newsom compared to Newson's previous election, in fact. Glenn Youngkin I see as more of a Reaganist. Victorious, and in a state that voted for Biden by a 10-point margin just last year. I think this is part of what Machiavellian is getting at too; that it's not just Trump, but Trumpism that seems to fare poorly at the ballot box with remarkable consistency.

To point to specific evidence of what I'm getting at, note that the exit polling out of Virginia finds that, whereas Trump got 44% of the state's vote last year and currently enjoys a favorability rating of 43% (i.e. essentially unchanged from a year ago when he was defeated), Glenn Youngkin got 51% of the vote. There's an 8-point gap there, you'll notice, that made all the difference between defeat and victory, composed of people who view Trump negatively but voted for Youngkin. This suggests that many people mentally differentiate the two. 

You know what demographic senses a difference between Trump and Youngkin most clearly of all? Mine. Whereas last Tuesday's election saw a 12-point swing toward the Republican Party compared to last year's presidential election overall, among white women without college degrees it was a gargantuan 37-point swing (from 56% to 44% favoring Trump last year to an overwhelming 74% to 25% favoring Youngkin this year). This was the single biggest change from last year. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think this one group may by itself account for most of the difference between Trump's defeat in Virginia last year and Youngkin's win this year.

I see Glenn Youngkin as an opportunist. The man started out his campaign wearing a business suit and tie appropriate to his tenure a former executive at private equity firm the Carlyle Group and talking like a cookie-cutter neocon candidate. By the time campaigning began in earnest, he was now wearing homier fleece vests and had adopted a more rousing, and almost coherent, tone; now a man of the people, not of the business world. Well most people only pay attention to the last few months of electoral campaigns, so the difference probably wasn't noticed by most Virginians. The man's aim is to seize on the public's concerns about shall we politely say interesting school policies to promote not the further democratization of the state's public school system, but rather its privatization. It is a subdued yet staple feature of his speeches to make sure to get a good word in for "school choice" and "vouchers" any time the issue parental concern is brought up. Befitting the fact that the main parent activist group in Virginia that's been organizing many of these protest actions, Parents Defending Education, appears to have been founded by paid agents of the Koch brothers, one seriously wonders whether the concerns of people at the top of these campaigns are really the same as those of the ordinary participants in reality. Probably not. Where ordinary Virginia parents may be frustrated at how little control they have over their own children's curriculum and school environment after a year and a half of being forced to homeschool them against their will, characters like Youngkin are more likely motivated by an aim to redistribute funds out of the public school system and into private schools that might be operated on a religious or for-profit basis and are even more lacking in democratic processes, for example. Liberals like Terry McAuliffe though cannot even be bothered to make this point because they're too busy falling for the trap by embracing reactionary myths like critical race theory, queer theory, and so forth. It's a slick con.

Nevertheless, we see in Youngkin's call to vaccination, in his pledge to veto any abortion bill similar to that which recently, infamously, got enacted here in Texas, and in his general mannerisms for that matter, the nature of the issues he chose to center, obviously in keeping the former president at arm's length and never campaigning with him, and other things, a desire to be distinguished from the former president. He did nothing to offend Donald Trump's enthusiasts, but he also made it clear that it was his goal to bring together, in his words, "Never Trumpers and Forever Trumpers"; phrasing that implies a distinction between both of these groups and himself.

Speaking of all this, in terms of analyses, I liked the one I saw on the PBS News Hour not long ago the best. James Carville does an outstanding job of summing up what the left is doing wrong overall while Amy Walter fills in some gaps on that and anti-Trump Republican Barbara Comstock highlights some what Glenn Youngkin did right in Virginia that reunited the conservative movement and made it accessible to more people:

I don't get how being high on drugs or drunk doesn't matter just because something else was a final deciding factor.

If another cop had ever so slightly egged Chauvin on to pin Floyd down, Chauvin would basically be innocent and it would be the other cops fault?

or

If they were actually able to force Floyd into the back seat when they tried, after he had complained that he couldn't breathe prior while standing, and on the way to the station Floyd passed out and died, it still would've been the cops fault?

Unrelated but seemingly relevant, if you're vaxed, and accidentally pass covid to someone with some type of overwhelming condition, and they die, you're guilty of their death?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the law, but if that's how it works, it needs to be rethought and rewritten.

Let me ask you this question, if you are unvaxx, work in a hospital, get COVID and pass it to a number of patients and they die, even if the patients were unvax and does not believe in vaccinations, would they still sue the hospital.

Everyone opinion change when they are the victim.  When you are on the outside looking in, they only thing you see is what your bias shows you but be the victim and lets say Floyd was your son, Daughter, Father or mother, even if they were on drugs or drunk, your outlook probably will not be the same.  You would question why that particular force was needed.  Everyone is always a hero in their mind until they face a difficult situation but whatever the situation, there is enough video proof that we need some form of accountability that allows police to be secure in their decisions and the public to be secure they are not abusing their position.

I wouldn't sue and anyone as stated, who would sue, is someone most civilized grown ups want nothing to do with. Act like an ungrateful child, be treated like a ungrateful child. The word "victim" today, like many other words, means something very different than it used to, and because of that, is clearly starting to lose it's significance, like those many other words, unfortunately.

As for Floyd, I'd kick my sons butt for being such an idiot (if he lived), and you can be sure that's not a political response. If my son didn't make it like Floyd, I'd do everything to have the matter investigated to know exactly what happened, and based on what's known about the Floyd situation and his past, if that were the case for my son, then he was basically asking for it. I'd still give Chauvin a piece of my mind, but that would be it. Trying to put the blame solely on others, especially when the majority of it is your, or someone else's fault, is childish.

The video does more to work against Floyd than for him, but that doesn't change the fact that Chauvin seemingly took it to far. So yes accountability, but using a law that makes little sense to discipline him, and likely harsher than need be, just makes the situation worse. Assuming the law is correct in how I understand it. It just makes people more upset about the outcome as it shows that trying to good can likely lead to severe consequences that make little sense based on the events. Which of course leads to many thinking, why bother trying to be helpful at all if you're just going to pay dearly for it eventually? Now is that a world we all really want to live in? The civilized surely don't, and won't.

If you're going to punish people, directly or indirectly, it has to be taken to extreme's to make sure the charges and verdict make sense, inside and outside of the court room. When that doesn't happen, you get things like the mass discontent of the Chauvin case overall, and when all added up, you eventually get things like 2016. As of right now, it looks like the next 'eventually' moment will come again sooner than later, coincidentally.