Today, the seditionist faction is in the Republican Party, and it will be hard to evict. Coalitions tend to include people who disagree with one another, but they set aside those disagreements in an effort to achieve their common goals.
The sedition faction is Republican because it is closer to the Republicans’ core conservative ideology. Party coalitions can be fluid, but they are not random. The sedition faction left the Democratic Party in the 1960s and ’70s, as civil-rights liberals became more influential in that party. Meanwhile, the modern conservative movement bound together a pro-business, anti-regulation economic position with a cultural, religious, and populist position that tends to oppose policies aimed at addressing racial inequality. This coalition benefits when Black voters, overwhelmingly Democratic, vote less. Principled Republicans may prefer not to give in to the antidemocracy faction’s worst impulses, but the two groups agree on more than they disagree on.
In the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection, Republicans outside the sedition faction may be willing to see Democrats win a few elections in the short term if it means saving democracy. But Republicans won’t make that sacrifice for long.
