If Donald Trump loses the election, to hear him and his campaign tell us, the fate of the Republican Party should be our concern: His defeat will mean the end of the nation and everything we hold dear.
But let’s assume that Trump and company expand and the country continues to exist. What will the GOP look like after losing – again?
This scenario seems to be getting a lot of attention lately, maybe because Trump himself has insisted that his defeat – again – will be due to fraud – again. The rhetoric does not indicate confidence in the prospects.
Some observers seem to think the GOP may not survive a Trump defeat. Under the headline “Trump’s potential loss threatens the destruction of the modern GOP,” Axios predicts that the party will be plagued by “identity crisis,” “brutal power struggle” and “years in the desert”. Why? Because “Before the identity of the party was closely related to the fate, fortune and defects of one person.”
I’m skeptical about the color.
Oh, I agree with the power struggle part. But we’re almost a decade into the Republican identity crisis. And for a year in the desert… Maybe.
But America’s major parties don’t spend much time in the wilderness because of the way the system works. If Kamala Harris becomes an unpopular president — which is hardly understandable given that she has been an unpopular vice president — voting for her, almost by definition, means voting for a Republican.
Additionally, the cult-like nature of Trump’s personality may help the party transcend Trumpism. There is very little to Trumpism, after all, beyond Trump himself.
It seems that if Trump loses, he will claim that this election was also rigged. And many Republicans will definitely feel the need to play along, which will be embarrassing for the country and, one hopes, career. But this can go on for a long time. If Trump once again has no real evidence of fraud and voters have less patience for a repeat of 2020, the association with a losing case and potential violence will lose political appeal for most officials very quickly.
After the smoke — figurative or literal — clears, elected Republicans can be expected to oppose the new Harris administration. The new president is in the middle of the news cycle, and if we know one thing about Republicans right now, it’s where the cameras go. The importance of checking on the Harris administration will also be the only excuse the Republican base can accept for rejecting Stop the Steal 2.0.
Fox News will also turn its attention to the new administration in short order burned before to repeat false election fraud claims. The smaller Trump-friendly media, meanwhile, will compete for the attention of those who won’t let Trump’s recovery dreams die. MAGA’s constellation of monetizers will also compete for shrinking market share with each other and with Trump himself. I mean, he sold watches and sneakers before the election, so he’s only going to redouble his efforts to squeeze every last dollar out of his fans.
One analog to this is the tea party movement. The groups marching under that banner had no official leader or organization, so after President Obama was re-elected in 2012, they split into factions. I expect the same to happen in the world of MAGA, leaving a bunch of demagogues to remove any signs of shrinking.
The more important squabbles will take place over candidates and party positions. The pro-life movement won’t just accept Trump’s recently adopted de facto pro-choice stance or push back the pro-lifers, starting with his running mate, JD Vance. Indeed, after losing the ticket, talk of Vance as the heir apparent will be laughable to many, especially the murderous GOP politicians who will be horrified by the promise of a fresh start. And Republicans can barely defend the substance of Trump’s trade policies right now, so I doubt they’ll even try if he’s not around.
Which brings us back to Trumpism without Trump. With the exception of Vivek Ramaswamy — the inexperienced MAGA grifter of choice — the other candidates seeking the party’s nomination this year largely speak the Reaganite language of the traditional GOP because that’s where their instincts lie. There will be a battle for the future of the party, of course. But Trump’s departure from presidential politics will herald the end of the Republican identity crisis, not the beginning.
@jonahdispatch
