During the past few weeks, and the political turmoil I have witnessed in the United States, it was not the behavior of President Donald Trump that was most striking, but the behavior of the Republican Party.

With this introduction, the American journalist Fareed Zakaria began an article in the Washington Post under the title "Has Trump pushed the Republican Party to the point of collapse?"

During which he tried to anticipate the fate of the events taking place in the United States in recent weeks, and what the Republican Party might turn into in light of Trump's actions.

Zakaria believes that Trump acted as he promised, as he challenged the election result, refused to commit to the peaceful transfer of power, and encouraged extremism and even violence, but what was remarkable was the behavior of the Republicans. Even after the congressional attack, only members of the Republican Party voted to dismiss Trump. 10 members only.

Even a few hours after Trump supporters stormed Congress and spoke to the writer, the majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives, including their leader, Kevin McCarthy, voted in line with the mob's demands, in an attempt to cancel legitimate elections and topple an elected government.

Will this loyalty and subservience to President Trump put some Republican politicians in isolation, and could Trump have finally pushed the party to the breaking point?

Something from history

And Zakaria notes that people usually assume political parties are immortal, but that they can die.

The Federalist Party was the first political party in the United States led by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, but it veered towards authoritarianism and lost its ideological coherence and integrity.

He was destined to collapse after his opposition to the War of 1812 (which saw the first congressional storm), which was considered treason.

He also sees that there are similarities between the collapse of the Federalist Party and what is happening today in the United States, as the right-wing party, which was founded as a party opposed to President Andrew Jackson, included pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions.

In 1848, the party tried to circumvent its divisions by nominating a famous slave-owner, Zachary Taylor, who had no precedent in politics, so most party members opposed his nomination.

Although he won the election, his candidacy split anti-slavery members from the party, and helped found the Republican Party, and by the late 1850s the right-wing party was in limbo.

Could these similarities be true of today's reality?

Disintegration factors

The modern Republican Party has many factions that have coexisted uncomfortably for a long time. There are liberals, evangelicals, state rights advocates and racists, according to the article.

These factions transcended their divisions for decades, but two important factors plunged the party into crisis in recent years.

The first factor is that the Iraq war and the global financial crisis broke the back of the Republican Party, and opened the way for Trump, who was able to convince the party's base, not to his elites, through the use of cultural and ethnic discourse.

The second factor is the party leaders' increased awareness of the fact that it is not a majority party.

During the past eight presidential elections, Republican presidential candidates won the popular vote only once in 2004, against the backdrop of the September 11 attacks and the first days of the Iraq war, a trend unprecedented in US history, according to the author.

The Electoral College and Senate, along with fraud and suppression of voters, enabled the Republican Party to win power without winning a majority, which made it less responsive to the demands of the majority, national elites, and the major media, as it found a way to win by creating its own facts, theories and heroes.

Zakaria points out that the popularity of the Republican Party has diminished significantly, as has Trump's popularity, and if these trends continue, we may see a dangerous change.

The writer concluded that the persistence of these aforementioned factors may lead to the defection of some Republicans - at the elite level as well as among ordinary voters - from the party, who would not accept being from the Trump family's Shiites, thus turning the Republican Party into a minority party in most regions of the United States.