Trump has carved himself a name into American politics, and according to an article from Bloomberg, he is replacing Reagan as the new ‘idol’ of the Republican party and setting the stage for future GOP contenders.
Donald Trump’s re-nominating convention this week is united around his vision for the party, but a loss in November will expose deep rifts in the GOP, forcing a battle over whether his brand of divisive, populist politics will last.
Win or lose, few in Republican politics think the party can ever return to the roots Ronald Reagan planted 40 years ago that embraced small government and an interventionist foreign policy.
That’s because Trump managed to harness a Republican base that isn’t likely to fundamentally change even if he loses. It is older, predominantly White and more rural — the same voters who gave rise to the populist Tea Party movement a decade ago — and few Republicans think they’ll automatically embrace a more moderate vision of the party or a more moderate brand of Republican candidate.
For that reason, the traditionalists face an uphill climb. Trump’s allies see the president as a Reagan-like figure who has re-made the Republican Party in a way that will last for a generation, said Andy Surabian, a former Trump White House aide who is now a Republican strategist.
The next presidential election year in “2024 is going to end up being a contest of people trying to prove that they have the ability to carry on the Trump torch, moving forward,” Surabian said. “The path for the party is pretty set.”
The problem with trying to move away from Trumpism after he’s left Washington is that there may not be enough Republicans in their corner, and they would need to persuade Democrats and independents who are hostile to Trump to warm to a GOP candidate. Well-to-do, college-educated suburbanites focused on business-friendly policies, many of whom were turned off by Trump’s coarse style, might be hard to bring back into the GOP fold.
That tension is evidenced by the absence at the convention this week of the only living Republican former president, George W. Bush, who won two terms in part by appealing to suburban moderates open to his message of “compassionate conservatism.”
By contrast, Trump draws his support heavily from working-class, non-college educated voters — mostly men — who want to slash immigration and oppose growing multiculturalism.
Michael Steele, who served as Republican National Committee chairman after President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, acknowledges the difficulty of fully remaking the party, but he would like to see the GOP alter its positions to be able to appeal to a more diverse swath of voters to remain relevant in a changing world.
“I think that’s an important battle that has to take place,” said Steele, a frequent Trump critic, who said he wants to see the party have the “epiphany” that Democratic nominee Joe Biden predicts will happen after Trump departs the scene.
“There’s a reason why a lot of us have not left” the Republican Party, Steele said. “We think it’s worth the fight.”
The party doesn’t lack for possible standard-bearers in a post-Trump world, as Republicans like Maryland Governor Larry Hogan emerged as a vocal critic of Trump’s handling of coronavirus. In Congress, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse and 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, now a senator, have been reliably anti-Trump voices.
But others in the party more likely to hew closely to Trump’s playbook won featured roles at this week’s convention. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley spoke Monday and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem will speak later in the week, both considered 2024 possibilities. Others include Senators Tom Cotton, Tim Scott and Joni Ernst. Dan Crenshaw, a first-term congressman from Texas viewed as a future face of the party, will also speak.
To varying degrees, they’ve all allied themselves with Trump, as have other possible 2024 contenders like Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
“We’re already starting to see all this jockeying for what comes next,” said Republican strategist Doug Heye.
Haley, in her address, seemed to be looking at both this election and, fleetingly, at what’s next. “We will build on the progress of our past and unlock the progress of our future. That future starts when the American people re-elect President Donald Trump,” she said. (source)
I’m not interested in Reagan. He was the Boomer candidate from almost a half-a-century ago. Rather, what interests me is that the GOP does not have a bright future, but the Democrats do, based on this analysis.
One of the major warnings I have put out is that the GOP is in serious trouble, much more so than the Democrats, to the point that they could die as a political entity. Because of long-term demographic changes, social attitudes, and generational changes, the GOP going to lose a lot of their “bastions” in the states and barring a major change to the political landscape, make it so that it would be difficult to get (a) Republican(s) elected in many areas for a long time. We already sees these changes in states such as Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, driven not by “brown people” but by the migration and concentration of coastal white liberals into major cities and then driving the states from the cities. From this view alone, things were not well for the Republicans.
A lot of people love Trump for his brash language and bold mannerisms of Trump, but what he has proven himself to be is nothing more than, in true Republican fashion, a mere “Democrat-lite” in that he has advanced a Democrat-friendly agenda while not following through in any serious way on his campaign promises. By using racial tension and polarizing speech, and now by establishing himself (or attempting to do such) as a sort of “new Reagan”, the GOP will be for decades bound to this image that in a nation of changing demographics will be associated, rightly or wrongly, with “racism” and used as a political baseball bat to beat any future Republicans into submission with who go against Democrat candidates no matter what views they are.
While many may disagree with this, especially on the political right, there is a dangerous chance- something that will have to be determined by future historians -that Trump put a noose around the GOP and then dumped it over a bridge to sway in the winds by the very same rope on its trachea.
If Trump wins in 2020, which he likely will prevail in, then prepare for at least a future of eight years under Democrat influence but having the same radicalism and extreme language as Trump except for their own context, and when one combines this with the dangerous language being tossed around today of race and accusations of racism but under a different context, it is not a formula for peace, but the legitimization of social chaos.
It is known that Trump has a long history of bankruptcies, and this seems to be continuing with the same pattern. First, he bankrupted his promises and legitimacy by outrageous lying. Second, he put the country further towards financial bankruptcy through money printing on a level that even Obama could not touch by way of the COVID-19 stimulus checks. Now he is bankrupting the remaining political capital that the GOP has to such a point the party itself as it is currently known may disappear.
So much for MAGA.