Glenn R. Anderson
How bad will a Trump loss be for the Republican Party and for how long will the damage last? Is it possible that Trump could spell the end of the modern Republican Party?
Since the mid-20th century the GOP has been a coalition party of free market capitalists, anti-government libertarians, and religious conservatives. For most of that time pro-business fiscal conservatives have been in the driver’s seat, often pandering to evangelicals and social conservatives in order to win elections.
However, in the 21st century, Republicans began embracing the populist Tea Party movement and anti-government libertarians. This allowed them to tap into an enthusiastic, committed base that could be counted on to turn out for elections, but in doing so they having been riding a tiger of angry populism.
The culmination of this drift away from traditional Republican values was the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
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Increasingly, the mentality of populist Republicans has been that of insurgent guerrillas fighting an asymmetrical war. Rather than talk about what they stand for, more and more they focus on criticism of their enemies. And increasingly they see those who oppose them, not as the loyal opposition, but as enemies.
Enemies of America.
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The modern GOP has built its entire philosophy around opposition to government, which they now refer to as the “deep state.” Their hardcore base has been told for decades that America is being held hostage by a cabal of Washington insiders, amoral Hollywood activists, and a hostile liberal media.
The goal of this new Republican Party is not found in a platform of ideas about how to govern. It is to destroy government itself.
Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief political strategist, said, “I am a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
Grover Norquist, a noted anti-tax conservative Republican, famously remarked, “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
The most extreme, crazy, fringe ideas, with which Republicans of the past would have been positively ashamed to be associated, are today mainstream for the GOP.
The modern GOP is most effective when it is fighting in opposition. However,once it becomes the governing party, we see the weakness of being a party the entire philosophy of which can be summarized in a single two-letter word: NO!
Even when controlling all three branches of government for the first two years of the Trump Administration, Republicans were incapable of getting anything done. It became painfully obvious there were no Republican ideas for heathcare, nor an energy policy, no response to environmental threats, no plan for how to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure, nor answers to a whole host of issues important to the American people.
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We also see the GOP under Trump has no real foreign policy, either. Just a series of impulsive, knee-jerk actions and reactions, as Trump unilaterally dismantles America’s diplomatic corps, attacks our intelligence services, and withdraws the U.S. from international agreements, all while alienating our allies and embracing the most despicable tyrants on the planets.
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The folly of this approach of demonizing your political opponent, rather than actually governing, was finally exposed when the nation faced a real crises with no one in the Republican Party willing to step up and lead. Trump’s response to the pandemic has been to lash out at his perceived enemies, but even some Trump supporters are starting to realize that name-calling and vitriolic bombast is no substitute for leadership. You can lie about how many people attended the inauguration and people will let it slide, but glossing over the deaths of 140,000+ Americans is apparently what it takes for some people to finally recognize that a reality show huckster might not be the best person to go to for medical advice.
Or anything else, for that matter.
When you spend all your time and energy strategizing how to destroy your opposition, it leaves little time left over for coming up with thoughtful ideas about how to address the nation’s problems.
And when you have made the government the enemy, what do you do when you are the government?
There was a time when conservatism stood for something. People like William F. Buckley, George Will, Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer, and Bill Kristol knew how to articulate coherent ideas based upon fundamental principles. Those people were not afraid to test their beliefs in the public arena of political give-and-take. They believed enough in the power of their ideas to put them up against liberal ideas without trying to turn liberal Americans into demons.
For all his faults, Ronald Reagan was able to work with the Democratically held House under Tip O’Neill and forge compromise legislation. Reagan’s philosophy was, “my 80% friend is not my 20% enemy.”
Today Reagan would be called a RINO (Republican in Name Only) and any Republican advocating such a common sense approach to governing would face a primary challenge from the hard right.
Twenty-first century Republicans and conservatives have no agenda, so they must attack. It is all about the politics of personal destruction. The great conservative intellectuals of the previous age have been replaced by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and “Fox and Friends.”
Trump is the apotheosis of a party that has replaced values with vitriol.
Having discarded their traditional conservative beliefs, the GOP has no choice but to unquestioningly support Trump, no matter what he says or does. Having climbed on to the tiger of angry right-wing, anti-government populism, they no longer have a way to get off. Trump’s fate is also the fate of all the GOP governors, senators, and congresspeo'ple who blindly supported him, even when they knew his actions were dangerous for the country.
So, what happens to the post-Trump Republican Party?
That is when we will most likely see the party split, with the little Trumplings taking the fire-eating populists into a new quasi-fascist, hard right party, and traditional right-of-center voters forming a party based upon conservative values of fiscal responsibility and pragmatic governance.
I imagine both right-wing parties will be much smaller, even combined, than the current GOP, with Democrats picking up disaffected common-sense former Republicans who are ashamed of what the once Grand Old Party has become.
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