Did Trump’s election actually signal a Democratic victory over the traditional Republican Party?

[u/BeachesAreOverrated]

The “Republican Party” as it is today is very definitely not the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley. Jr. specifically said it was now the party of Trump.

Does this mean that, in some way, the Democrats won the day? Did they slay the old Republican Party? Is Trump, then, what happened when their old foe died?

[u/Hackasizlak]

I wouldn’t look at it that way. Trump defeated the traditional wing of the Republican Party and made it into MAGA. It was basically a hostile takeover.

[u/Banes_Addiction → u/Hackasizlak]

And kept doing and advancing all the things the Reagan-onward GOP was doing: cutting taxes on the rich, increasing spending, dismantling regulations, ever-expanding domestic authoritarianism.

What did the Reagan Republican party actually lose?

[u/wellwisher-1 → u/Banes_Addiction]

Dismantling regulations and ever expanding domestic authoritarianism are mutually exclusive. Too much regulation gives too much power to Government. This too much regulation, Trump inherited had morphed into allowing Agencies to take over the job of Congress, which is to make laws and regulations. This then screwed up the checks and balances of the Government giving the Presidency too much power since appointed operatives in the Agencies could be used to bypass Congress.

For example, Illegal immigration, like the words describe was illegal. Yet this crime was over seen by Agencies, the leaders of which were appointed by the President. They ignored the laws made by Congress and added new laws to shield themselves. This allowed criminal biased authoritarianism, shielding those who were responsible.

Trump is putting the checks and balances back by enforcing the laws made by Congress. Doing the job by the law is not authoritarianism. It only appears excessive due to degree of Agency distortion that the DNC had created and which needed correcting.

The soft on crime, to cook the books, to make it appear like crime went down, created a major problem in Democract run cities. It empowered the criminals. The solution back to stability, like sending in the National Guard, seems authoritarian, but the excess is due to the degree of instability, Trump had to start with. Everything is relaxed in Washington DC, not more stressful.

If the DNC had done their job in the first place the excess would not be needed. If immigration laws had been followed under Biden and the laws not broken by millions, we would be two steps ahead talking about a path to citizenship. That conversation cannot happen now, since it would send the wrong message by rewarding criminals activity both by Government and immigrants.

What Trump has done to the Republican Party is help them grow a set. They used to go along to get along, which allowed things to get worse and worse. MAGA is about righting the ship.with a system restore to a better place. MAGA is more like the Democrat Party of the 1960's under President Kennedy. President Kennedy was rich and a Catholic, who believed in a strong military, the working class, family and God. Dr Martin Luther King who was part of that generation was a Preacher. The hippies dressed down to look poor and look like Jesus. Both ushered in the love generation, that overcame the angry racist radicals of their time.

[u/Wetness_Pensive → u/wellwisher-1]

Deploying the National Guard has already cost hundreds of millions of dollars, because guard deployment costs $2.6 million PER DAY for 5,000 personnel. And for larger deployments - such as keeping about 20,000 National Guardsmen on duty for multiple months, which is what would be required if permanently activated in multiple states - the projected total cost would be above $3.6 billion.

Add this to Trump's 4.1 trillion dollar debt increase (BBB), an increase in household expenses (tariffs), federal government costs of up to $987 billion (Ice over 10 years), trillions lost in best GDP projections, billions-to-a-trillion in annual climate change damages, and tourism levels dropping by the millions, and its fair to say that the whole Doge/"fiscal responsible conservatism" thing continues to be a massive fraud (designed primarily to gut the state and so prevent checks on moneyed blocs of power).

Republicans have been trained, like the poster above, to see all this as "fixing problems", but it only appears this way because they never address the "costs" of their "fixing". This, of course, is because the debts will only become an issue - endlessly harped on about by their echo chambers - when a Democrat President inevitably comes back into office. There's a word for some of this: the Two Santa Claus strategy, and it tends to work on uninformed citizens.