What Trump Understood about the Republican Party
How did a party that once prided itself on principle become in thrall to the most unprincipled president in history?
How did this happen? How did one of the two major American political parties become controlled by one man? How did 53 Republican Senators abdicate any pretense of advice and consent? How did it become a threshold for advancement in the party to deny who won the 2020 election?
To call it partisanship is to call Ebola an airborne virus like the flu. It’s both true and woefully inadequate. The level of subservience in the Republican Party is unlike anything we’ve known in American politics. Running for office is often humiliating, inevitably exhausting, rarely enjoyable. You must suffer fools to an enormous degree and do so while feigning interest and appreciation. All of these Republican Senators and Congressmen endured the dehumanizing gauntlet of election only to come to Washington and do what? Whatever it is Donald Trump requires.
This doesn’t happen by chance. We did something in the Republican Party. Over decades we developed a system that rewarded compliance and punished independence. The path to advancement was to go along, to wait your turn.
For a self-avowed conservative party, it is particularly ironic. We were the party that railed against the Evil Empire of Communism that crushed individuality for the Greater Good of the State. Now any hint of non-compliance is crushed. There is no tolerance for differences of opinion. The Republican Party is now a “conservative” party that has no room for a Cheney.
What we are seeing in the Republican Party is like a genetic experiment that took decades to cultivate. Like much of American politics, race is a key factor. In 1956, Eisenhower got 39% of the Black vote. That dropped to 7% support for Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act, in 1964. In 2020, Trump received 8%. That’s one point every 56 years. In 2024, Trump increased that to 15% but if anyone thinks that Trump has ushered in a new paradigm for Republicans, take a look at Trump’s approval with Black voters, now at 11%. Only 25% of Hispanic voters view him favorably.