If Donald Trump loses the election, to listen to him and his campaign, the fate of the Republican Party should be the least of our concerns: his defeat would spell the end of the nation itself and all that we hold dear.
But let’s assume that Trump and company are exaggerating and this country continues to exist. What will the GOP look like after defeat – again?
This scenario seems to be happening a lot from attention More recently, perhaps because Trump himself has emphasized that if he loses—again—it will be because of fraud—again. Such rhetoric does not exude confidence in his vision.
Some observers seem to think that Republicans may not survive a Trump defeat. Under the headline “Trump’s Possible Loss Threatens to Destroy Modern Republicans,” Axios predicted the party would be “sunset.identity crisisa “brutal power struggle” and “years in the wilderness”. why Because “never was a party’s identity so deeply intertwined with a man’s fate, wealth and disadvantages”.
Make me suspicious
Oh, I agree with the power struggle part. But we’re now almost a full decade into the Republican identity crisis. And as for years in the desert … maybe.
But America’s major parties don’t want to spend much time in the wilderness because of the way our system works. If Kamala Harris turns out to be an unpopular president—which is hardly conceivable given that she was an unpopular vice president—voting for her would be almost like voting for a Republican.
Additionally, the cult nature of Trump’s personality could help the party overcome Trumpism. After all, Trumpism is nothing more than Trump himself.
It seems that if Trump loses, he will claim that this election was also rigged. And many Republicans no doubt feel the need to play along, which will be an embarrassment to the country and, hopefully, to their careers. But this can only last for so long. Assuming Trump once again has no real evidence of fraud and voters have less patience for a 2020 repeat, the association with a losing case and potential violence will lose its political appeal for most officeholders fairly quickly.
When the smoke — figurative or literal — clears, expect elected Republicans to turn against the new Harris administration. New presidents are at the center of the news cycle, and if there’s one thing we know about Republicans today, it’s that they go where the cameras are. The necessity of investigating the Harris administration will also be the only excuse most Republicans will accept for abandoning Stop the Steal 2.0.
Fox News will also turn its attention to the new administration for a relatively short time already burned Due to repeated false allegations of election fraud. Meanwhile, smaller Trump-friendly outlets are vying for the attention of die-hards who won’t let the dream of Trump’s rebuild die. MAGA’s collection of moneymakers will also compete with each other and with Trump himself to reduce market share. I mean, he’s selling watches and sneakers before the election, so he’s redoubling his efforts to squeeze every last dollar out of his fans.
One such case is the Tea Party movement. The groups that marched under that banner had no formal leadership or organization, so after President Obama was re-elected in 2012, they split painfully into factions. I expect the same thing to happen to the MAGA world and a lot of demagogues will let go of the decreasing number of symptoms.
Later fights broke out over party candidates and positions. The pro-life movement just won’t accept Trump’s recently de facto pro-choice stance or support those who happily go along with it, starting with his colleague JD Vance. Indeed, after losing the ticket, talk of Vance as the heir apparent seems laughable to many, especially the many Republican pols eager to deliver on the promise of a fresh start. And Republicans now have a hard time defending the substance of Trump’s trade policies, so I doubt they’ll try even if he’s gone.
Which brings us back to Trumpism without Trump. With the exception of Vivek Ramaswamy — a MAGA assassin with no election experience — the other candidates seeking the party’s nomination this year generally spoke the Reaganite language of the traditional GOP because that’s where their instincts rest. There will certainly be a battle for the future of the party. But Trump’s departure from presidential politics heralds the end of the Republican identity crisis, not its beginning.
@jonahdispatch
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