If Donald Trump loses the election, to hear him and his campaign tell it, the fate of the Republican Party should be the least of our worries: His defeat would spell the end of the nation itself and everything we hold dear.
But let’s assume that Trump and company exaggerate and that the country continues to exist. What would the GOP look like after losing – again?
This scenario seems to be gaining ground Very From Attention lately, perhaps because Trump himself has underlined that if he loses, once again, it will be due to fraud. Such rhetoric does not exude confidence in his prospects.
Some observers appear to believe that the GOP may not survive Trump’s defeat. Under the headline “Trump’s Potential Loss Threatens Destruction of Modern GOP,” Axios predicted the party would be plagued by a “identity crisis”, a “brutal power struggle” and “years in the desert”. Why? Because “never before has the identity of a party been so deeply intertwined with the destiny, fortunes and defects of a man.”
Color me skeptical.
Oh, I agree with the power struggle part. But we are already almost a full decade into the republican identity crisis. And as for the years spent in the wilderness… maybe.
But America’s major parties don’t tend to spend a lot of time in the wilderness because of the way our system works. If Kamala Harris turns out to be an unpopular president – which is hardly inconceivable given that she has been an unpopular vice president – voting her out would mean, almost by definition, voting for a Republican.
Furthermore, Trump’s cult-of-personality nature could help the party overcome Trumpism. After all, there is little to Trumpism beyond Trump himself.
It seems likely that, if Trump loses, he will claim that this election was also rigged. And many Republicans would undoubtedly feel the need to play along, which would be a shame for the country and, hopefully, their careers. But this may only last for a certain period. Assuming that Trump once again has no hard evidence of fraud and that the electorate has even less patience for a repeat of 2020, the association with a losing cause and potential violence would lose its political appeal quite quickly for most officials.
Once the smoke – figurative or literal – clears, elected Republicans could be expected to oppose the new Harris administration. New presidents are at the center of the news cycle, and if we know one thing about Republicans today, it’s that they go where the cameras are. The imperative to control the Harris administration would also be the only excuse that much of the Republican base would accept for abandoning Stop the Steal 2.0.
Fox News will similarly turn its attention to the new administration relatively quickly after leaving burned before for repeating false allegations of voter fraud. Smaller, Trump-friendly media outlets, meanwhile, would compete for the attention of diehards who won’t let the dream of a Trump restoration die. The constellation of MAGA monetizers would also compete with each other and with Trump himself for dwindling market share. I mean, he sells watches and sneakers before the election, so he would redouble his efforts to squeeze the last few dollars out of his fans in the aftermath.
An analogue to this 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 into merging factions. I would expect the same to happen to the MAGA world, leaving a slew of demagogues squabbling over a dwindling supply of brands.
More consequential clashes over candidates and party positions would result. The pro-life movement would not simply accept Trump’s recently adopted de facto pro-choice position, nor support those who have happily accepted it, starting with his running mate, J.D. Vance. Indeed, after losing the ticket, talking about Vance as heir apparent would sound ridiculous to many, especially the slew of Republican politicians who would be eager to run on the promise of a fresh start. And now Republicans can barely defend the substance of Trump’s trade policies, so I doubt they would even try once he was out of the picture.
Which brings us back to Trumpism without Trump. With the exception of Vivek Ramaswamy – a MAGA hustler with no elective experience – the other candidates seeking the party’s nomination this year generally spoke the Reaganite language of the mainstream GOP because that’s where their instincts remain. There will certainly be a battle for the future of the party. But Trump’s departure from presidential politics would portend the end of the Republican identity crisis, not the beginning.
@jonahdispatch
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