The Death of the Republican Party

and what real Republicans must do to reclaim it

If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.

                                                                                           -Dwight D. Eisenhower

         The Republican Party, as it once was, is dead. What remains of it is the party of Trump. Donald Trump hijacked a once proud institution and bankrupted it. Indeed, the Republicans have given away the store to Trump. They excused his abhorrent behavior and his hateful agenda and are riding him straight into long-term political oblivion. Voter suppression may work for a while, but demographics do not favor the party, and its leaders know it.

         What his blind adherents chose to overlook was far more serious than Twitter rants and pronouncements at orchestrated rallies. In Charlottesville in August 2017, Trump insisted there were “very fine people on both sides.” When Minneapolis police murdered an unarmed, handcuffed George Floyd in Minneapolis in the spring of 2020, and protests erupted in Minneapolis and all over the country, Trump not only offered no words of comfort to the nation but fanned the flames by tweeting that, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” When white nationalists attempted to kidnap and murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump responded by attacking her and her policies, making no mention of the near tragedy. And when Trump attacked the impeachment inquiry witnesses, his supporters remained mute in response to his outlandish, abhorrent calls for several of these dedicated public servants to be tried for treason. Finally, Trump foisted his Big Lie on his party and the nation, and directly prompted an insurrection. If anything, the party’s slavish devotion to Trump and his followers has increased over the past nine years.

         The Republicans’ determination to avoid the facts in the first impeachment trial and focus on flimsy and even frivolous arguments was emblematic of their kamikaze mission to save Donald Trump’s presidency at all costs. These efforts reached absurd levels. Mike Pence mused that Trump was a gift from God. Perhaps Pence meant that Trump’s election was a gift from God directly to him, in that he had every right to believe that Trump would not survive politically his first term. After the chants of “Hang Mike Pence” on January 6, 2021, clearly the joke was on him.

         And with it all, Republicans continued to support him to the tune of 90%, even given his handling of the pandemic, the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and his blatant efforts to steal an election.

         No version of the former Republican party would ever have countenanced such a person. He would have been shown the door by party elders, as was the case with Richard Nixon in 1962 after his disastrous California gubernatorial campaign. In fact, Trump never would have been nominated by the Republican party of old. A poll taken in the late fall of 2019 that indicated that 57% of Republicans believe that Donald Trump was a better president than Abraham Lincoln. Little has changed in the nearly four years since he left office. This is indicative of a party that has turned its back not only on its heritage, but on democracy.

         How did it happen?

         The origins of today’s Republican party date back to the 1950s. Dwight Eisenhower was viewed by some Republicans, led by Ohio Senator Robert Taft, as too moderate. Eisenhower’s more temperate brand of conservatism, however, represented the party’s mainstream. Eisenhower placed a priority on spending for socioeconomic priorities, which met with opposition from the right wing of the party that was more concerned with ensuring that the military was well funded. This disagreement extended through Eisenhower’s administration, culminating in the warning in his farewell address that the nation needed to be vigilant with respect to the excesses of the “military industrial complex.”

         The next step on the road to the party of today was the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964. The ultraconservative Goldwater was trounced by LBJ, but he gave birth to the modern, take-no-prisoners party that led us to Donald Trump. Goldwater’s nomination represents the first modern example of the convention system failing to weed out a dangerous candidate.

         As the years passed, the Republican base became more conservative, but moderates still dominated the party. Then, in the late 1970s, coinciding with the rise of Ronald Reagan, the right wing of the party broke through, winning Senate seats against well-funded Democrats in 1978 and 1980. Among those who lost their seats were Democratic Senators George McGovern, John Culver, Birch Bayh, Herman Talmadge and Thomas McIntyre. They were helped by the realignment of Southern Democrats toward the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Movement. Much of the shift resulted from the polarization of the party, most prominently on the hot button issue of abortion. The pro-life movement, galvanized by the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, began flexing its muscle in a significant manner, led by self-proclaimed housewife activist Phyllis Schlafly.

         During Reagan’s time, the widespread belief was that his ideals would come to characterize the party’s philosophy and agenda. That notion disappeared with Reagan himself. Whether it was taxes, gun control or abortion, the party moved decisively beyond Reagan’s comparative moderation. In a relatively short period of time, it was transformed into a party that would never have nominated its-one time hero. The radicalization increased dramatically when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, and has grown apace since that time. That period brought about frenzied attempts to destroy Clinton’s presidency, fueled by a new generation of right wing media beating the drum on a daily basis in support of one bizarre conspiracy theory after another. It ended with a spectacularly failed attempt to impeach the president over his sexual misbehavior.

         The 1994 midterm elections brought about the Contract for America and the subsequent takeover of Congress for the first time in several decades. Newt Gingrich became the face of the party, and conflict replaced cooperation and negotiation. Gingrich’s obstructionist approach to governance became the hallmark of the party’s new philosophy. The party of Gingrich was led largely by members from the south, many of whom were Evangelical Christians, which foreshadowed the rise of a movement that elected Donald Trump.

         None of this came without cost. The Republican Party lost the Northeast at the turn of the new century. Many largely moderate voters there who were once reliable Republican votes rebelled again the new extreme incarnation of Republicanism. In particular, women were increasingly alienated. This pattern was manifested in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections, in response to the outrages of Trump.

         Another milestone occurred as a result of John McCain’s misbegotten selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate. She became a rallying point for the angry, the aggrieved and bitter, the anti-immigration xenophobes and the growing anti-establishment anti-intellectual movement in the party. As Tim Alberta observed, Palin’s ascent was a sign that something was going on in the Republican base. We went from “glorifying excellence and achievement to embracing this anger and grievance and contempt.”

         The election of Barack Obama brought with it a refinement of the anti-everything philosophy that characterizes today’s Republican Party. Everything was corrupt and the old order had to go.

         Ronald Reagan would not have recognized this iteration of the Republican Party. Gone were Ike’s moderation, Reagan’s occasional pragmatism, George H.W. Bush’s thousand points of light and George W. Bush’s self-professed compassionate conservatism. Virtually all of the values that were hallmarks of the old GOP were erased, to be replaced by incivility, contempt for intelligence and talent and a loathing of the different. It took several decades, but movement conservatism eliminated all opposition from the center and purged anybody who was known as a moderate Republican.

         Today, the Republican Party has been transformed into an authoritarian institution built in the image of a disgraced but resurrected ex-president. It has no regard for the principles upon which the republic was founded, not even for the Constitution itself. Norms are shredded, rules trampled, and fairness mocked.

         This was facilitated by a sea change in Congress. For some time now, even traditionally conservative candidates have not been safe from primary challenges. Anything less than total purity to the extremist base is sure to result in a primary challenge. Devotion to Trump has become the new litmus test. Since 2017, dozens of Republican moderates and even conservatives have abandoned their seats either in disgust at what the party has become or because they knew they could not survive a challenge from the far right. More than 15 Republican legislators were ostracized, censured, and physically threatened for voting to impeach or convict Trump after the Capitol insurrection in early 2021. Primary challengers from among the Trumpists emerged immediately and continue to emerge from under rocks today.

         All of these signals should have provided some warning of the coming Trump era. That they did not is largely a measure of the inability of reasonable people to imagine that other Americans would vote for him. The toxic brew of irresponsible pseudo-news outlets and the successors of the Tea Party movement radicalized the electorate to a fever pitch. The result was a collective desire to smash the existing order to smithereens and allow Donald Trump to replace it with chaos.

         There is a myth harbored by some that Trump turned the Republican Party into a cynical, unprincipled institution that preyed on the poor, on minorities and on working people. In fact, Trump was elected precisely because those characteristics preceded his rise. He was the perfect vessel for a large sector of the Republican constituency.

         The Republican Party initially was horrified by Trump’s success, but Mitch McConnell realized that Trump’s total inexperience with governance could play to his advantage. He decided to mold Trump into a rubber stamp for his preferred policies. In return, McConnell promised Trump legislative victories that would please his base. Fundamentally, McConnell used phony promises to appeal to credulous Republican voters and in so doing, actually persuaded them to support legislative initiatives that were, in many cases, inimical to their own interests.

         What McConnell and the rest of the Republican hierarchy wanted to do was eradicate in their entirety the progressive accomplishments of the past ninety years. This, they all knew, would redound to the benefit of the wealthy. Nobody else mattered. The corporatists believe in outsourcing, globalization, and creative destruction. The corporate class derides the idea of a safety net for the poor (at least they are consistent—this has been a mantra since the New Deal). Instead, they have lavished welfare on their corporate clients. These policies have cost millions of jobs, yet Trump’s die-hard supporters have failed (or willfully refused) to grasp this reality.

         The Republican strategy has several other key components. First and foremost is to eliminate the Democratic party from any influence on public policy. It really is that simple. Republicans don’t even bother to pay lip service to the idea of two-party democracy. This is a war for survival and they will, as we have seen, do anything to maintain political and policy advantage. The other part of the strategy is the successful population of the federal courts with cadres of mini-Scalias. Short of increasing the size of the federal courts or shortening the terms of judges and justices, this strategy will alter the course of jurisprudence for ill and will reverberate for decades.

         The cynicism is breathtaking, and the Republicans got away with most of what they tried. Of course, they fashioned an unholy alliance between their corporate allies, Evangelicals, the angry and aggrieved, and the crazed. These disparate elements of the Republican coalition had nothing in common, except for a desire to return to the 1950s (or the 1850s in some cases). This improbable alliance has remained intact for eight years and will in all likelihood survive Trump himself. Indeed, it represents more than 40% of Americans, which makes them a powerful force.

         As Hacker, Mann and Ornstein have written, the Republican Party is now outside the mainstream of American politics. Its ideological extremism and disdain for compromise has made it an obstacle to accomplishing anything. The reason is clear: The Republican leadership and most of its rank and file know that they are on the wrong side of demography. Their base is older and minorities are an ever growing portion of the population. They are on the clock and have no choice but to claim as many victories as they can before that clock runs out. This is a fight for survival, and the stakes could not be higher. Their hold on power grows more and more tenuous and with their backs to the wall, they have become extremely dangerous.

         In fact, the Republican Party of today has no discernible principles. Its primary job is the care and feeding of its base and supporting virtually everything Donald Trump says and does. The party is an oligarchy that feeds its base promises that America can be returned to the safety of the 1950s, when the real result will be a kleptocracy. Everybody in the coalition gets something. The Republicans deserve a perverse sort of credit for their success in persuading working Americans to vote against their own economic interests by exploiting and stoking cultural division. The Republican hierarchy derided the power of the federal government on the one hand, and on the other cheered on Donald Trump’s constant abuse of power through the gross misuse of federal authority. The legislation supported by Republicans is almost always some version of corporate welfare. This is truly crony capitalism at its best.

         The Republican hierarchy has a defense for every outrage. The disastrous response to the coronavirus? China’s fault. Bullying the Justice Department to indict Obama, Biden and Hillary Clinton? Crickets. Insurrection? He didn't mean for it to become violent.

         Let us not delude ourselves. Trump was the messenger, not the cause of the revolution. Things would have been no different under Mike Pence, except that the behavior of the holder of the presidency would have at least been somewhat connected to the world we inhabit rather than the alternate universe that has characterized our national life for the past nine years. There is one statistic that highlights the detachment from reality that characterizes most Republicans today. One poll found that 61% of Republicans believed that Trump was a good role model for their children. By comparison, only 2% of Democrats believed it (although I would love to know who they are and why they style themselves Democrats).

         Trump did everything possible to delegitimize his opponents. Those who do not accept the king and his policies aren’t just wrong, they are enemies of the state. Trump unsuccessfully attempted to inoculate himself against a loss in November 2020 by screaming in all caps that the election was rigged before it happened. He fought at every step state efforts to make it easier for citizens to exercise their right to vote. He has succeeded in convincing a very large majority of Republicans that he is right about all of this.

         The issues of race and religion loom large in any discussion of where the Republican party is today. Trump and others reinforced the belief of many whites, especially males, that minorities are going to overrun and subordinate them. The sad fact is that many of Trump’s supporters voted for him and continued to deify him because they believed he would prevent this imaginary Armageddon. Polling data supports this. In the summer of 2016, a poll of South Carolinians who supported Trump revealed that 38% percent of those surveyed wished the South had won the Civil War, and another 38% said they weren’t sure. Only a quarter of Trump’s supporters were glad that the Union was preserved. This is beyond shocking. It is repulsive.

         Many of those who support Trump claimed to like his economic policies and his willingness to break the system in order to fix it. Trump demonstrated time and again from his days as a landlord to his tenure as president that he is a racist through and through. Those who continued supporting Trump after years of racial turmoil effectively became tolerant enablers of his bigotry.

         The Evangelical community’s support of Donald Trump represents the worst kind of hypocrisy. That a community which preaches godliness and charity toward our fellow human beings and which professes to follow to the letter the teachings of Jesus would adopt with such fervor and frenzy a man who knows little to nothing of kindness, charity, love and respect for the teachings of Christ, is stupefying.

         Evangelicals abandoned everything they believed in, using all manner of moral jujitsu to justify their actions. In 2011, only 30% of Evangelicals thought that politician who committed an immoral act was worthy of public office. Faced with the prospect of a president who fulfilled all of their temporal desires in 2016, 72% percent said such a politician would be worthy of the office he or she held. This manifested itself in the voting. Exit polls in 2016 had Trump winning the white Evangelical vote by an 80% to 16% margin. The margins were similar in 2020. George W. Bush, himself an Evangelical Christian, managed a 78% to 21% margin.

         Yet on another level this should not be surprising. Many Evangelicals do not practice what they preach, nor do they even pretend to do so. Their main concern is to impose their version of morality on others because they believe that their belief system is the only one ordained by God.

         Among the most visible manifestations of this moral certitude is the conviction that women do not have the right to choose. It is monumentally ironic that among these individuals is a concurrent belief that the baby and its parents are on their own once it is born. As a general rule, Evangelicals do not believe in social safety nets or in charity for the poor. Indeed, many believe that wealth is a sign of the Lord’s blessings. Today, we know these people as Christian Nationalists.

         This helps to some degree further explain the appeal of Donald Trump. Despite his probable exaggeration of his net worth, Trump is indisputably wealthy by any standard. And yet one wonders if the Evangelical support for Trump would remain high if his tax returns showed that he is worth millions rather than billions. The answer is probably not, but it would be interesting as a matter of curiosity to know whether that is true.

         Mike Lofgren summed it all up well when he wrote that, “The rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.”

         Taken together, these abominations are the indicia of a party that is in a death spiral. Trump is their avatar and representative for their grievances, and so it is all acceptable for the furtherance of the higher purpose of self-preservation. In reality, the party’s behavior serves only to hasten its demise. The party created an identity around hatred of the Obamas and the Clintons. Once they lost those bogeymen and had to govern, it became clear that they were devoid of ideas and bankrupt of any guiding moral principles. This is the Republican party of today. Unfortunately, the tribalism that the Republicans have mastered and which permeates our national consciousness will survive Trump and perhaps the party. If it is not seriously confronted, it could destroy this democracy.

         The Republican Party seeks permanent control of the United States government by a minority of the population. They have no choice if they are to survive and maintain their policy agenda. They know that the majority of Americans oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare, lower taxes for the rich, and ultra-conservative judges. The GOP is also on the wrong side of issues such as racial justice, mass incarceration, lack of support for education in impoverished school districts, health care, income inequality and climate change. Beholden to the fossil fuel industry, the Republicans are going to try to prevent any effort for one last chance to save the environment.

         As we have seen, the means by which the Republicans intend to preserve their gains is by shrinking the Democratic vote by any means necessary. They have no more votes to find. Every indicator demonstrates that they top out at 45%, and that is probably generous in the wake of the 2020 census which demonstrated that the white population had declined over the previous ten years. The only way you win with 45% is to ensure that Democrats don’t exceed that number. The fly in the ointment is the fact that Trump has enough adherents among independents to elevate his support to close to 48%. That number will be a persistent problem for Kamala Harris during the last two-and-a-half months of this campaign.

         Many Republicans saw this coming, but were powerless to do anything about it. Trump’s takeover of the party was complete and decisive. There is no longer a culture of compromise in the Republican Party. Polls show over and over again that Democrats want voters who will make reasonable compromises, while Republicans adore politicians who refuse to bend. Never Trumpers immediately recognized the extreme danger for the Republican brand, but nobody was listening. A successful effort by principled conservatives to sink Trumpism might yield a takeover of the party in the wake of a decisive repudiation of Trump. Even if that fails, there is the possibility of a new party.

To succeed, they will need to convince many of these defectors to transfer their loyalties back to a Republican party they rejected in 2020 and continue to reject in greater numbers in 2024. That is wishful thinking. Until Trumpism is purged, there is no possibility of reconciliation.

         The Never Trumpers have been able to explain in graphic detail the extent and implications of the damage Trump visited on the party, the nation and the world. But they also must articulate a vision for where they want to take the party in the years to come. For that vision to be acceptable to the Trumpers, it will have to address the anger that impelled them to vote for Trump in the first place. Therein lies the dilemma. Traditional conservatives will never adopt isolationism, anti-corporatistism and bigotry. That leaves the party cleaved in two, with no apparent solution.

         The effort to restore sanity is vital to the future viability of the GOP. The Trumpists’ ability to hold on to power will slip away in less than a generation. We need at least two thriving parties. Today we have a Republican Party that is a hollow shell, taken over by one man. That Trump could so easily co-opt an entire party demonstrates that it has existed on a foundation of sand for decades.

         Trumpism will survive his loss in the short term, and we can expect a continued and even more intensive effort toward self-preservation by the remaining Trump faction. This will undoubtedly lead to intensified efforts to suppress the vote at the state level, with the support of the Supreme Court. Unless a Democratic Senate eliminates the filibuster, the Republicans will use it to delay or block critical legislation, especially bills that strengthen voting rights.

         But the greatest threat is the reaction of Trump’s supporters to his loss. They did not accept his defeat in 2020, and their claim that Biden is illegitimate suggests civil discord will be our fate for the foreseeable future. The only hope is that sane and principled Republicans will successfully reclaim their party and relegate the Trumpists to fringe status. That doesn’t mean they will go away, but it would guarantee that they will no longer have the wherewithal to win elections. To accomplish this, the Republicans will need to come up with policy ideas that conform to the tenor of the times. Lacking an agenda, the party of Trump will persist, and we will be doomed to live on the knife’s edge of impending political turmoil.

         The nation needs two vibrant, sane parties. The first step in that direction must be a commitment by Republicans to own and atone for Trump. Nothing will change unless that happens. Republicans must want to fix their party. If the Republicans want to revive their fortunes they must adopt a platform of ideas that appeals to Never Trumpers, independents and even conservative Democrats. They need to end the culture wars and begin reaching out to minorities and suburban moms.

         Unfortunately, there is no immediate prospect of that happening, because there is no apparent desire to do so. For the foreseeable future, the Republican party will remain what it is: a destructive organism surviving by suppressing minority voters and squashing democracy. That is unacceptable, and as a result the only solution is to send the Republicans into the electoral wilderness for at least a decade, until they realize that their only hope of restoring their place in our politics is to abandon the race and culture wars, corporatism and become a party that once again appeals to reasonable voters.

         To accomplish that, we need a spell of Democratic control of the levers of power. It is the fervent hope of many that this comes to pass in November 2024. Otherwise, we will face dictatorship, social chaos and potential economic disaster. For those who remain undecided, if that isn’t enough to convince you to vote Democratic this November, I don’t know what it will take.