“Wwhy Trumpism? Said one. “What will a post-Trump GOP look like?” asked another. “Republicans are preparing for leadership when Trump falls,” a third said. “On the track: the first signs of a post-Trump GOP,” a fourth suggested.
Anyone who knows the 2016 presidential election knows that it’s too early to write Donald Trump’s political obituary, but a recent crop of headlines alleviates a growing fear of the Republican Party’s fate as he does, as polls show. currently suggest, in November after the defeat.
Republican politicians are jostling for position with a view to 2024. Never Trump activists hope to purge his brand of nativist demagoguery of the party. Authors and commentators are thinking about whether a post-Trump Republican party should look like the pre-Trump one as if he should start over.
Peggy Noonan, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, asked, “Where did Donald Trump come from? Where is the GOP going? Should the whole thing be burnt down? Bret Stephens, a columnist for the New York Times, notes that if Trump loses, “the party’s future is in jeopardy. It’s time to start thinking about who can tackle it, who should and who will. “
The debate has been fueled by hints that Trump may weaken his current iron grip on the party. Republican leaders have so far denied his idea of postponing the election because of the coronavirus pandemic. During negotiations on the latest economic stimulus package, they set aside his proposals for a cut in a tax office and a new FBI building.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled to vulnerable Republican senators in tough election campaigns that they could distance themselves from Trump if they deem it necessary, according to CNN.
But the forecasts remain valid for two reasons. First, the elections are far from over. Despite Trump facing the pandemic, massive unemployment and historically weak questions, he still has time to jump surprises against his opponent Joe Biden in these most unpredictable campaigns.
Second, the end of Trump would not necessarily mean the end of Trumpism. Nine in 10 Republicans still vote for the job he does as president, according to Gallup. A SurveyMonkey poll for Axios last December revealed Republican voters’ favorite picks for 2024 led by Mike Pence, with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. in second place, followed by Nikki Haley, Ivanka Trump, Marco Rubio and Mike Pompeo.
It may be too late to put the Trump genius back in the bottle. That is the view of Stuart Stevens, one of the most successful campus strategists, whose contribution to the growing literature on his identity crisis It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.
‘He’s the Republican Party. There is not even an opposition government in exile. There is no De Gaulle; there’s just Vichy France. The party is the party that Roy Moore supports [US senate candidate in Alabama accused of sexual misconduct] and attacked John Bolton [former national security adviser]. “What we saw as a recessive gene in the party turned out to be a dominant gene,” Stevens said.
Stevens continued: “If you ever want to be depressed, read George W. Bush’s 2000 acceptance speech. It reads like a document of a lost civilization. Who are these people? It’s like the Maya. It’s all about humility and sacrifice and honor and service. ”
In a recent interview with the Guardian, Democratic strategist Paul Begala argued that a crushing defeat for Trump would be a catalyst for Republicans to reconsider and reconsider, just as Democrats did after three clear defeats in 1980, 1984 and 1988. But Stevens believes it will take more than one election.
“Trumpism itself is deeply ingrained in the party and I think history tells us darkly that if a major party legitimizes hatred, which the Republican Party has, it is very difficult to undo it,” he said. “It takes time, maybe a lot of blood.”
The core base of Republicans – older white men – shrinks with each election cycle as America’s demographics diversify, while Trump has alienated many suburban voters. “The party has no desire to change. The only thing that will make the party want to change is fear. That is never very convincing for voters, because they see it as transparent. That I think we are a period of center-left government, “Stevens said.
The pandemic has provided a national platform for moderate Republican governors such as Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Larry Hogan of Maryland and Phil Scott of Vermont, all leaders of traditional democratic states and are therefore seen as potential crossover professionals. John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio who ran in 2016, was able to make another bid in 2024, trying to cast Trump as an aberration that should never happen.
But they will likely have an up-and-coming battle against loyalists – potential senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley or even Fox News host Tucker Carlson – claiming he is Trump’s real heir. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ex-ambassador to the United Nations, has at times cautiously distanced himself from the president and cherished his base among others.
An internal struggle can prove cathartic. Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said, “You’ll have a lot of Trumpers who put forward a Don Jr. like a Tom Cotton and you’ll have a lot of other people who have a Kasich or Larry Hogan or who.” t can otherwise arise in that space.
‘That’s the battle ahead. We will continue it and we must continue. It could mean the splintering of the party. It can mean the formation of something else. We do not know exactly how Republicans will re-evaluate and appreciate what Republicans are. ”
Tensions have been running high on Capitol Hill lately, where a third of the House’s 198 Republican members have been elected since 2016, mostly following Trump’s agenda. Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, strongly supports Trump on some issues, but has criticized him on foreign policy and the pandemic, asking her to dismiss her as the Republican no. 3-house.
Michael Steel, a former aide to John Boehner when he was House Speaker, suggested that this provides an overview of how pro-Trump Republicans will try to rationalize the election result: by fascinating party factions who are not enough were loyal. “They should be able to blame everyone and everything else like President Trump himself, so they can make a straw man argument that he is being stabbed in the back by a fifth column of disloyal Republicans instead of by his own words and actions,” Steel wrote. in the Dispatch, a conservative website.
Cheney is seen as defending at least some traditional Republican shibboleths left by Trump, such as fiscal responsibility and a hawkish attitude toward Russia and other opponents. Challengers for the president’s legacy ‘America first’ could also mitigate the party’s positions on the climate crisis, immigration and trade.
But they would need a thick skin: even in the defeat, Trump would still have Twitter, Fox News and the Make America Great Again movement at his disposal for heckling.
Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, claims the party has been caught in five steps of its own accord, which Trump has only deepened: a rigid move to the right; demographic change; influence by right-wing media its ability to govern bluntly; large tax cuts that created a split between their working class supporters and conservatives in the market; a contempt for democratic norms and institutions.
Patterson, author of a new book, Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself ?, thinks it will go a long way back. “If you look at what happened in 2018, the Republicans took quite a bit of drubbing in the midterm elections, and there was no lesson learned,” he said. “The way right-wing media spun was the reason Republicans lost because too many of them tried to move to the center.
“Even if they really hit in 2020, I think it will probably take two or three of those beats. They can talk all they want about reinvention, but as long as the primary nomination process continues to cough up these conservatives, it will be really difficult for them to make the change.
‘If you ask, who are the moderate leaders who will be at the forefront of that change who have credibility with the base and elsewhere, boy, that’s a really short list. They have cleaned themselves up nicely from the mediocre leadership. ”
