Recently, Charles C. W. Cooke wrote that Republican voters must choose between conservatism and Donald Trump. Trump’s continued dominance of the GOP would lead, Cooke argued, to continued political frustrations.
It’s also perhaps worth considering whether a Trump re-nomination in 2024 would strengthen or, in fact, imperil a GOP “realigned” in the direction of pro-worker populism and economic resilience. Trump demonstrated great power as a political disrupter but considerably less success as an architect of a winning political coalition.
Trump smashed the (already fragile) 2015 bipartisan elite consensus on trade and immigration. He shook up the networks and affiliations that characterized both movement conservatism and the Republican Party. He defeated the two great dynasties that presided over American politics in the 1990s and 2000s. With an eye for human weakness, Trump can simultaneously unleash great passions in his supporters and turn his opponents into a mirror image of himself. His attempt to overturn the 2020 election pushed the United States to the brink of a constitutional crisis; the vice president arbitrarily throwing out the votes of states would have crossed an institutional Rubicon.
Jeb Bush called Trump the “chaos candidate” in 2015, and chaos can be a force for change. Trump’s issues were not entirely new. In 2012, Mitt Romney was also critical of trade with the People’s Republic of China and was perhaps even more hawkish on illegal immigration than Trump. But Trump pulled it all together in a new, shocking combination and breached the “blue wall” that had given Democrats such an edge in the decades before 2016.
As president, though, Trump did not deliver on many of his campaign promises. The wall was never built, the Affordable Care Act was never repealed, and no infrastructure bill came to pass. The made-for-cable-news Trump Show sucked up most of the oxygen for policy movement. He alienated a host of former political allies and many American voters. He offered plenty of chaos — but fewer policy successes.
Some of the Very Online Right are at least Caesarist-curious: Believing American society to be fundamentally corrupt, they turn their agitated eyes to some powerful leader who can at last free the republic from its decadence. The 21st-century Caesar would crush the Davoisie, the deep state, and the degenerate PMC. Donald Trump, who valorizes “strength” even of despots to enforce their will, sometimes lingers in the background of these ruminations on a Caesarist American restoration.
However, Trump’s most strident norm-breaking has often been a product of — and a contributor to — political weakness rather than strength. His refusal to act with a modicum of personal restraint on Twitter and elsewhere helped keep his approval ratings below 50 percent throughout his presidency. The “reality TV” nature of his administration (complete with endless personal vendettas and leaks) kneecapped the executive branch. Rather than putting in the work and showing discipline to win the 2020 election, he instead attempted to overturn it after the fact. The president begging the vice president to throw out the votes of states is a low point of the presidency in more ways than one. FDR, who won one sweeping victory after the other, certainly didn’t have to plead with any of his vice presidents to deliver him from his own electoral defeats.
(If some Trump supporters have indulged in fantasies of Caesarism, some of his critics have succumbed to the temptations of Sulla-ism. The tribune of the optimates in ancient Rome, Sulla used proscription to target his political opponents. The effort to “resist” Trump and populism through lawfare and other norm-breaking efforts has itself at times undermined constitutional stability.)
Starting in November 2020, Trump trained his instrument of destruction on Republicans, subjecting them to the new litmus test of denying the legitimacy of the 2020 election. He did succeed in making many Republicans bend the knee on this issue, but 2022 showed how such a message imperiled Republicans at the ballot box in must-win states. A 2024 campaign dominated by January 6th, overturning the 2020 election, and fighting various legal investigations of Trump might also have disappointing results for the party.
For the goal of a “realigned” Republican Party, the task of 2024 would be very different than 2016: less about disrupting an old paradigm and more about situating the party within a new, evolving one. That would take political discipline, the ability to engage in policy, and the attempt to reach out to a range of voters. Various Republicans in Congress, statehouses, and governor’s mansions across the country have shown an interest in updating the GOP. In recent cycles, some Republicans have been able to build large, diverse coalitions and win elections decisively. In the years during and after his presidency, Trump seemed unable or unwilling to do that. He lost the popular vote twice, and, in many swing states, candidates picked by Trump and identified closely with him lost by significant margins in the 2022 midterms.
In politics, governing can make or break a political paradigm. The Bush-era GOP was in part undone by many of the policy choices of Republicans during the 2000s. While Boris Johnson delivered a political triumph for the British Conservatives in 2019, the Tories since then have been unable to update their policy program to meet the needs of a new coalition and, as of this writing, could risk an electoral wipeout during the next parliamentary elections. A GOP serious about political realignment would need to marry policy imagination with the ability to move significant reforms. One of the greatest threats to a “realigned” GOP would be the inability to rise to the occasion of a realignment — squandering energies instead on a campaign of personal grievances, conspiracy theories, and performative outrage.