I recently discussed the Republican party from about the 1950s to 2008. My claim was simple: the GOP is a coalition of groups whose elite leadership was based around Richard Nixon. The very top of the GOP was run by a staunch cold-warrior and his buddies, such as Gerald Ford, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and George Bush. Traditionalists, Civil rights era reactionaries, and business conservatives provided the votes that this group used to lead the party.
I wrote that essay, “Nixon’s Revenge,” in 2009 and a hell of a lot has changed in the meanwhile. The Nixon party hung for a little while longer with folks like John McCain and, of course, Jeb! Bush, but the pressures of the Iraq War and the Great Recession completely crippled establishment Republicans. What replaced the Nixon dominated party and their establishment allies?
First, the party moved hard into what I call the “entertainment” phase of the GOP. In essence, a lot of Republican voters are really motivated by the theater of symbolic politics. All parties have theatrics, but the difference is that theatrics leads to leadership. You no longer win as a Republican by promising balanced budgets, managing inflation, or other conservative technocratic topics. Instead, you ratchet up the rhetoric as much as possible. Build a wall separating the US and Mexico? Sure. Ban abortions even in cases of assault? Yup. Oppose non-existent open borders Democrats? You bet.
Second, the elite level of the GOP is actually fairly disorganized. Unlike Nixon, Trump burns through his allies so quickly that there is no network of Trump allies who might take over the party. Pence will not succeed Trump. Former allies like Haley have turned and friends like Bannon and Giuliani might spend more time in jail than in an office during Trump’s second term. Note that some GOP leaders still keep their distance, like Mitch McConnell, and primary candidates like Haley still got substantial votes.
Third, conservative policy making infrastructure and judicial trends will remain intact. Though he is an avid populist, Trump still appointed Ivy League jurists like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and Trump appointed judges still rule in conservative ways. There is no Trump policy organization that will displace Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute. The Federalist society continues as usual.
This is the reason I titled this essay “Battlestar Trumptastica.” The modern GOP is not some unified Borg-like entity. Rather, it is a very large shambling coalition cruising toward victory. The leadership is chaotic, but it’s entertaining, which enables primary victories. A victory in the 2024 general election might result from a few years of bad inflation, or voters bailing on an elderly president, or the Democratic party aligning itself too much with woke urban elites. Whatever the reason, it might be enough to allow the GOP’s ragtag fleet to reach their dream destination, another four years in the White House.
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