According to CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer, the Republican Party is looking at a possible landslide loss with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November that could change the national landscape for the party for years to come. and lead to a leadership shake-up.
In an opinion piece for CNN, Zelizer said that the GOP should be "terrified" by polling that shows the president may suffer a "historic" loss by Trump that may see the White House and the Senate go to the Democrats with more damage at the state level as Republican voters stay home and down-ticket Republican candidates suffer.
According to the analyst, "President Donald Trump's reelection prospects look increasingly grim, with polls showing that his ticket is vulnerable in states like North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. According to one recent Fox News poll, Joe Biden has a two-point lead over Trump in Georgia—where a Democratic presidential candidate has not won since 1992," and that will only be exacerbated by the fact that the GOP is not drawing in much in the way of voters of color who are fast becoming the most important voting block.
Pointing out that the landslide victory by Ronald Reagan set the stage for a conservative revival that still lingers today, the analyst claimed Democrats could be on the verge of claiming a massive victory in November -- due to Trump -- that could also have long-ranging reverberations.
"Election victories of this scale and scope are harder to come by these days," he wrote adding, "A landslide election is one of the few cataclysmic events that could actually challenge our current political landscape. It would leave Republicans, a party influenced by intense partisanship, to finally do some serious soul-searching and put forth constructive policies and a new political strategy in order to win again."
According to Zelizer, that sea change could lead to turnover within the GOP leadership as the party attempts to become relevant again.
"It would force a reckoning within the party, which has stood loyally by President Trump throughout his term," he explained. "A huge defeat could give younger voices in the GOP —rather than the Tucker Carlson types who take a deeper dive into Trumpian Republicanism—the political space to push their leadership to finally move in different directions."
Admitting that the president might still avoid a wipeout, he also wrote, "but if these current poll numbers hold, Biden might end up accomplishing something truly historic. If he and the Democrats inflict the kind of damage on the GOP that members can't simply forget, he might end up ushering in a 'new normal' that Washington has not seen in a long time by pressuring the Republican Party to think long and hard about the principles of governance and institution-building once again."
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