Editor's Note: Steve Schmidt is one of the founding members of the Lincoln Project. He is a communications and public affairs strategist who has worked on several Republican campaigns, including John McCain's 2008 bid for the White House, and he is now a regular political contributor to MSNBC. On Saturday, Schmidt delivered an 8-tweet prediction as to the future of the Republican Party. MaxNewsToday has assembled this thread and reprinted it as one easy-to-read op-ed for our ongoing segment, Schmidt Storm. It has been edited for grammar and clarity. The die is cast for the Republican Party. It will be destroyed on Jan. 6th in much the same way the Whig Party was destroyed by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. The act unraveled the Missouri Compromise and allowed for the westward expansion of slavery. The party could not survive its factionalism. There could be no more accommodation, compromise and partnership between pro-slavery and anti-slavery Whigs. A new political party was born, the Republican Party. That party will divide into irreconcilable factions on Jan. 6th. The 6th will commence a political civil war inside the GOP. The autocratic side will roll over the pro-democracy remnant of the GOP like the Wehrmacht did the Belgian Army in 1940. The 2022 GOP primary season will be a blood letting. The 6th will be a loyalty test. The purge will follow. Does anybody doubt the outcome of the Ivanka Trump vs. Marco Rubio primary in Florida? Anyone willing to make a bet on Rob Portman? It turns out JFK was right. The problem of trying to ride the tiger is the likelihood of winding up inside the tiger. The poisonous fruit from four years of collaboration and complicity with Trump's insanity, illiberalism and incompetence are ready for harvest. It will kill the GOP because its pro-democracy faction and autocratic factions can no more exist together then could the Whig Party hold together the abolitionist with the slave master. It won’t happen overnight, but the destination is clear. The conservative party in America is dead. It may continue to bear the name “Republican,” but it will be no such thing. Fascism has, indeed, come to America, and as was once predicted, it is wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. This movement must be defeated. It cannot be appeased, accommodated or negotiated with. It must be recognized for what it is, and we must all recognize the new age of American politics it has wrought. It has reset the debate entirely. There are only two sides in American politics now. There is the American side and the autocratic side. May God help us all if we falter, flag or fail in defense of American democracy.
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