> Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?

Hope? They're working on it. And they're not being particularly secretive about it.

can you share some of these plans to halt democracy?

You mean apart from ridiculously obvious gerrymandering, voter suppression, crippling the Federal Election Commission, increasing state control of the media, the end of habeas corpus, state kidnapping of citizens, the entirety of the Project 2025 document, the destruction of constitutional norms, the clauses to neuter judicial oversight in the Big Beautiful Bill, and a president planning to run for (at least) a third term?

You know the Dems are just as bad about the gerrymandering, right? Also the media control: see the Twitter files.

Sure thing! If you go to Trump's official store (ridiculous statement on its own for a sitting president), you'll find a whole lot of "Trump 2028" merch.

I personally can't think of many ways to be more blatant than that.

It's a joke to upset progs and commies. Looks like it is working as intended.

If a democratic president is elected they will reverse their decisions until a GOP president is elected again.

I doubt that very much. I think what will happen is that the dems will run on doing that, get elected to do that, and then not do any of it, and nobody will really care or even remember. Everything will be cool because it’ll be a cool dem president and all the problems will be the republicans fault, just like obama.

>Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers? Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?

They aren't even being remotely secretive about it.

I’m pretty tuned into the conservative water cooler, and I’ve heard three realistic theories on post-Trump executive power. To be clear, these are real opinions I’ve heard self-described Trump voters espouse—not my opinions:

1. Most of the federal judges and SCOTUS will overturn bits and pieces of executive power once a Democrat tries to use them. See Biden and school loan forgiveness. They firmly believe that Thomas and Alito will retire during this administration, and they hope Sotomayor or Kagan retires or dies.

2. Democrats are too skittish to use executive power to do anything revolutionary with it. Even when they had a trifecta during the first Obama term they barely did anything with it.

3. Regardless of the other two points, it’s very unlikely for the Republicans to lose control of House and Senate again, and the Senate can revert to being effective when the executive is a Democrat. A Republican House can constantly submit articles of impeachment and a Democrat president will get bogged down dodging the accusations, even if they’re spurious.

> Democrats are too skittish to use executive power to do anything revolutionary with it. Even when they had a trifecta during the first Obama term they barely did anything with it.

This.

A lot of the focus these days is on SCOTUS, but most of what Trump is doing was already permitted by law for the executive branch well before he came into office. The real question is: Why didn't past presidents utilize that power that they clearly had?

> The real question is: Why didn't past presidents utilize that power that they clearly had?

The two parties have different platforms and have material differences in the way they govern, but the oligarchs that fund both sides of the aisle ultimately want the same thing - more money and power at the expense of the working class. Both sides are not the same, but both sides _are_ complicit.

That said, you'll notice that a lot of the whataboutism in this comments section tries to equivocate the policy of the two sides. It obviously false, but it's purposeful in that it's trying to bait responses that correct the record of the Democrats. A response that instead advocates for specific policy is much more productive and derails the attempt at making the conversation about red vs blue.

Conservatives really think they're going to keep Congress forever? They should look at how the "permanent Democratic majority" worked out.

Sorry, that should have said “lose control of both House & Senate,” i.e., they’ll probably control at least one.

It’s relatively easy for them to hold a close margin in the Senate, demographically speaking, and if internal migration patterns continue the number of “safely conservative” House districts will continue to rise.

> Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers?

I can confidently predict that whatever out-the-arse-shadow-docket rulings SCOTUS have made for Trump will suddenly not apply to a Democratic president and the office will be hamstrung by executive limits pretty darn toot suite.

Secretly?

This isn't new at all and has been happening for decades, a continuous ratcheting up of Presidential and Executive Branch power since the dawn of the Cold War. Usually it's because of "national security," and it happens when both parties are in power. The march pretty much began with the National Security Act of 1947, though some might place it earlier with FDR and the New Deal. An argument can be made for both, with the left tending to blame the former and the right the latter. (I think the real answer is both to some extent but the National Security Act is the more significant of the two.)

An argument can be made after things like the second Iraq war that we have already entered the decadent empire phase of US history and the President effectively does have a great deal of dictatorial power. It's not supposed to be possible to wage a war like that without a congressional declaration, making such wars a pretty huge abdication of power by the legislative branch. If the President can just start a war on a whim, that power can be used to drag along the entire rest of the government.

Now, with ICE, we are establishing a lawless executive branch police force. This is just the unilateral power of the President to wage war coming home and being applied to domestic affairs. It will soon be possible, if it isn't already, for the President to order their own independent police to do anything, and if it is considered illegal the power of the pardon can be used to make that go away. The arbitrary power of the pardon is a pretty awesome power when you think about it.

When the ratchet gets far enough down this path we may indeed see a president remain in power forever like Xi Xinpeng. Trump may or may not be that person. If it's not him it might be the next, or the next. It could just as easily be a left-wing populist demagogue as a right-wing one depending on which way the winds happen to be blowing when the final ratchet click happens.

Rome continued to exist for quite some time after its Republic collapsed, but it was definitely the beginning of the end.

We've seen the GOP reaction at a State level. When a Dem governor is about to take office, the GOP legislature passes sweeping bills to limit executive power and the about-to-be-former GOP Governor signs them.

Consider that you're already having to ask this question 6 months into a 4 year term, and what happened the last time their guy lost an election.