The Sound of Trumpets

Are we at the dawn of a new political era?

I know, I know I’ve been touting the virtues of optimism when it comes to American politics—and I’m still convinced of the need for optimism if the republic is to survive as a democracy. But, you know, it just ain’t easy. And it’s been especially hard over the last week or so as Donald Trump has resurged, or perhaps regurgitated himself, into the forefront of Republican politics. He just seems more artful and savvy than any of his opponents. He’s actually better at politics than he used to be; skill comes with experience and he has plenty of that now. His performance at the Republican donors meeting over the weekend was incoherent and solipsistic as ever—he’s still ranting about the 2020 election—but there also was this moment, according to The Washington Post:

The Republican Party “had a big chance of extinction,” Trump said, calling for the party to rally around him as its 2024 nominee, according to the audio recording. He also said that until he came along, the GOP was a party known for starting wars overseas, cutting Social Security and Medicare at home and allowing amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally. [Emphasis mine.]

This is strange brew in a room full of GOP donors, most of whom favored all those overseas wars, and also favored cutting entitlement programs (and also favored looser immigration, to keep labor costs down). And it seems part of a larger strategy—yes, a strategy—for tamping down Ron DeSantis, who is having a tough month in conventional-wisdom land. Indeed, DeSantis was the topic of way-premature enfizzlement speculation on Meet The Press Sunday. The Florida Governor’s headline of the week involved the one culture war issue that favors Democrats, as he signed an extreme anti-abortion bill this past week. As the Wall Street Journal opined:

Donald Trump has also been notably silent about abortion since Dobbs, and his advisers are telling reporters that Mr. Trump thinks the issue is a loser for Republicans. The aides are also quietly spinning that Florida’s six-week ban makes Mr. DeSantis less electable in the general election against a Democrat. Mr. Trump may figure that since he appointed the Justices who overturned Roe, he can now run to the left of Mr. DeSantis on abortion.

But Trump’s real play against DeSantis, at least when it comes to the wooing of the base, involves a New Deal-Great Society defense of Social Security and Medicare. And that, in turn, raises the question of whether he has invented a new version of the Republican Party, which has rendered the Old Guard hopelessly out of touch. The extremely astute Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark certainly thinks so, which is one reason why I’m feeling pessimistic about my optimism these days:

In American politics, there were conventions and candidates that existed in 2015 Republican politics as the before times. 2015 BT. Before Trump.  

Before the escalator and “grab ’em by the p***y.” Before Muslim bans and a wall Mexico would never pay for. Before we’d heard of Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Lauren Boebert, or the QAnon shaman. Before an American president sided with Vladimir Putin over his own government’s intelligence network. Before Donald Trump became the first president to turn his back on the peaceful transfer of power. 

This period has existed outside of nearly all established norms, yet many Americans seem to believe that it is an interregnum. An aberration. An accident of history that will undo itself—soon—as norms and the old equilibrium return. [Emphasis mine.]

I think this view misunderstands the true nature of what has happened to the Republican party because it does not see what has happened to Republican voters. 

I’ve sat through hundreds of focus groups with GOP voters over the last four years and one thing is perfectly clear: The Republican party has been irretrievably altered and, as one GOP voter put it succinctly, “We’re never going back.”

And it’s certainly why the previously lugubrious DeSantis put up an ad during the Fox News Sunday show criticizing Trump for attacking “Republicans” (i.e. him) on entitlements. It remains to be seen—I’m pretty dubious—whether DeSantis or any other Republican can go negative on Trump successfully. His supporters are just too crazy loyal. So, there are three questions on the table in this race: Is being a rabid culture warrior enough to woo the base? Or does the base now demand a left-populist entitlement policy along with the culture stuff? And, finally, does the base demand a candidate as base as Trump. It may not be sufficient to go after after Woke Disney (a questionable tactic given the hours the Disney Channel serves as a baby-sitter in many blue-collar households) without the sheer drama and anger and entertainment value—the gladiatorial combat against the self-righteous left—that Trump offers. As Longwell proposes, eczema may be the new normal in American politics.

In other words, Trump may have changed not only the substance and demographics of Republican politics, but also the style and nature of it. If so, he has become a figure of extreme significance in American history—right up there with presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln—the creator of a new brand, a new political coalition. If so, we should not look to candidates like the Mikes, Pence or Pompeo, or Chris Sununu or Nikki Haley as potential GOP nominees in future races, but to Kari Lake, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and, especially, Tucker Carlson.

I’m sure there are Democrats who are thinking: Wow. That’s terrific news. Those guys are natural born losers. Sorry, but it isn’t. The stakes are too high; it’s just too risky. The new Republican Party represents a fundamental diminution of American public life. And the current corroded state of the Democratic Party, the sheer interest group entropy of it—the very idea of locating their national convention next August in the violent Teachers’ Union Satrapy of Chicago—doesn’t offer a very exciting alternative. There is nothing exciting or interesting about the Democrats. (Which may, in the end, qualify them for support from some former corporate Republicans.) These new right-wing populists are more entertaining, in a society where entertainment has supplanted actual governance. The Dems could use some irony, a comedian-patriot candidate, a Zelensky.

In the gerontological sack-race of 2024, Biden might stumble past Trump…though given the cleverness of the moves Trump has made so far, I wouldn’t bet the house on it. Over the long term, though, Longwell’s thesis may reverse the DNA of the parties. The Republicans become charismatic; the Democrats, conventional. And we, the Sanity Caucus, wander the desert parched and powerless.

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