After Trump's impeachment acquittal, Sen. Mitch McConnell launched a brutal attack against Trump, blaming for events on January 6.  On Tuesday, Trump responded with an even harsher attack on McConnell.  Is this a clash of titans presaging the end of the Republican Party?  I don't think so.  I think it's an announcement that the Republican Party is at a crossroads and that the voters need to decide the party's future direction.

Outside the South, in the years immediately after WWII, the Democrat party represented the poor, blue-collar workers, and academics.  In the South, the Democrats' anti-black racial obsessions, which reached back to the decades before the Civil War, meant that blacks who ought to have been Democrats (poor or blue-collar) were nevertheless Republican if they got the chance to vote.

Outside the South, Republicans represented business interests, the rich, the up-and-coming middle class, and the bigwigs in small towns across the nation.  In the South, white Republicans were careful not to make waves among the racist Democrats, who responded with brutality to anyone who crossed them.

In the intervening decades, things have changed radically.  Democrats now represent large corporations, the poor, the extremely rich, college graduates in the middle- and upper-middle classes, and minorities.  This holds true across America, whether in the South or outside it.  Regarding minorities, Democrats have re-worked their racial obsessions to convince minorities that the Democrats' harmful policies have the minorities' best interests at heart.

Democrats have achieved power by breaking their constituents into a multitude of special interest groups, assuring them that they are "intersectional" and are all imminent victims of Republican racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, transphobia, etc.  The Democrats' ascension to control in D.C., which will result in inevitable vicious fights over political spoils, will prove that their interests are not intersectional.  Now, though, they're a tightly bound political unit focused solely on achieving total power.

Meanwhile, the Republicans represent...  Whoa.  That's a bit more complicated.

On the one hand, the Republicans are trying to represent Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce crowd.  On the other hand, they are trying to represent small businesses, the working and middle classes, and blue-collar workers.

These two groups do have some important things in common.  They are not obsessed with race.  They do not believe that biological sex is a "fluid" concept defined by feelings instead of biology.  They support the military.  They believe in the rule of law.  Many of them are traditionally religious.

The differences, though, are what have led to the fight between McConnell and Trump.  McConnell's crowd is an internationalist crowd.  Having Americans as factory workers is costly, and having them as the consumers offers only limited profits.  The McConnell team seeks bigger labor and buyer markets.

The McConnell Republicans' dream world is one in which labor can be hired cheaply abroad in China or Mexico.  Alternatively, if factories are going to stay in America, they want to have cheap labor at home, either through unlimited illegal immigration or by conferring instant amnesty on the tens of millions of unskilled, non-English-speaking illegal aliens already in the U.S.

McConnell's Republicans also want to have access to the Chinese marketplace.  There's a lot more money in selling things to 1.4 billion Chinese than to 330 million Americans, especially because so many of the latter are broke and on drugs, thanks to their factories closing and the lockdowns' devastating effects on small businesses.  If you want access to the Chinese marketplace, you must dance to China's tune.

Although their reasons are different, when it comes to open borders and dealing with China, there's not a lot of daylight between the McConnell Republicans' goals and the Democrat party's approach to our borders or to China.

The Trump contingent wants jobs to stay in America for Americans and (legal) immigrants.  They also look at China as a dangerous enemy, one that takes their jobs and trade secrets, floods their markets with cheap goods and opiates, trains tech titans in the ways of tyranny, possibly interfered in the last election, and may deliberately have sent a dangerous virus to American shores.

Trump doesn't want to start a new party.  The GOP has an enviable infrastructure across America.  Therefore, he wants to energize Republicans to vote during the primaries for their vision of the GOP.  Trump will stump for candidates who have traditional American social values, while also supporting strong borders and a strong policy against China.  Meanwhile, the McConnell contingent will be throwing its weight behind candidates who support the Biden administration's open borders and subordination to Chinese interests.

If, like me, you are a Trump conservative, you have the power to take over the GOP, lock, stock, and mailing lists, turning it into a completely pro-American party.  To do that, though, you must vote in your state's primaries.  (This offer is not valid in California, which has open primaries, completely negating the Republicans' chances to have a say in their political destiny.)

Image: Trump and Mitch McConnell collage.  Images by Gage Skidmore.