While “Reaganism” remains *an article of faith for many conservatives*, the future of the Republican Party—despite its recent setbacks at the ballot box—is increasingly defined by “Trumpism,” according to New York Times opinion writer Damon Linker.
“The second Trump administration has given the country 10 months of relentless power grabs, a globally disruptive trade war and, most recently, a demolition project at the White House—all while an inexorably rising cost of living continues to weigh on American workers,” Linker writes. “The result? A presidential approval rating that has plummeted from already middling levels.”
Linker poses the question: Could former President Donald Trump be a temporary aberration? Might the Republican Party return to its Reaganite essence once the man who has done so much to tarnish it finally leaves the Oval Office in a few years?
Unfortunately, Linker believes Reaganism is over. “In other words, is the future of the Republican Party Reaganism or Trumpism? The answer, I’m afraid, is most likely Trumpism,” he states.
### Reaganism: A Fleeting Moment
President Ronald Reagan, Linker notes, was a unique figure. “Reagan’s election in 1980, through the presidency of George W. Bush and the candidacies of John McCain and Mitt Romney, was an unusual and fleeting moment of moderation and responsibility for the G.O.P.”
Reaganism, he explains, “was provoked and inspired by the sense of threat and moral clarity of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath.”
### The Republican Party’s Shift
Today, Republicans have returned to what Linker describes as “a spirit of furious reaction to modern liberalism, an unwillingness to countenance compromise with the realities of governing a sprawling continentwide commercial nation, and a conviction that political wisdom lay in the country’s turning inward and indulging a temptation toward self-absorption.”
He emphasizes that any serious effort to understand what lies ahead for the GOP must grapple with these potent and persistent strands in the party’s political DNA.
### The Rise of a Rebellious Right
A rebellious right wing began to take shape at the end of the Cold War. “Discontented factions on the right first began to rebel against their marginalization immediately after the end of the Cold War and demise of the Soviet Union,” Linker explains.
During George W. Bush’s administration, the Cold War script was rewritten to portray the global war on terror as a battle for freedom against the enemies of civilization. This narrative “largely satisfied the most rabid factions of the Republican base.”
Linker adds, “Had a Democrat been president when Al Qaeda unleashed its attacks, the furiously reactive antiliberalism of the Old Right might have overwhelmed the G.O.P. more than a decade before it actually did.”
### Populist Rage and the Tea Party
Republicans in the White House managed to keep populist rage submerged, but it began to rise in response to the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, finally boiling over during the Obama administration. This gave birth to the Tea Party protest movement.
Today, Linker says, “we’ve been living in a world dominated by Mr. Trump and a newly emboldened hard right.”
The MAGA movement, he writes, “aspires to take a wrecking ball to the ‘administrative state’ and career civil service, use extortionist threats to force ideological capitulation across civil society, deploy troops and a masked federal police force to round up and deport millions of immigrants, and bully other countries into submission to the president’s will.”
### The Legacy of Trumpism
When Trump eventually exits—and he will—Linker acknowledges that the most personalistic and corrupt aspects of his rule will likely fade.
But many other elements of Trumpism will linger. “Much of the rest will remain, including a willingness to use sweeping state power to combat anyone who dares to defy the destructive impulses of the rejectionist Republican base,” he warns.
### Looking Forward: A Pressing Priority for the GOP
Removing these reactive and destructive impulses, Linker argues, should become the Republican Party’s number one issue.
“What might tame these reactive impulses is unclear,” he writes, “but doing so may be the G.O.P.’s, and the country’s, most pressing priority.”
https://www.rawstory.com/the-future-of-the-gop-is-not-what-it-used-to-be-analysis/
