Donald Trump has shown such resilience, such a gift for political survival, that it takes a certain effort of the will and intellect to remember that one day we will look for him and he won’t be there. Like the titular character in “Jaws,” his enemies keep tying things to him — allegations, indictments, impeachments — in the hopes of slowing him down. Yet Trump keeps on swimming, as politically viable as ever.
But Trump is not immortal. Some death, either political or physical, will eventually usher him off the stage.
So long as Trump remains alive he will lead the Republican Party. During that time, conservative elites can defer pressing questions about how the GOP became so disconnected from its base that an outsider with no political experience, an amateur campaign and skeletons falling out of his closet managed to wander into national politics and take their party away from them.
But as soon as Trump is gone, the party will have to make its own decisions about policy, rhetoric and political strategy. An important question for political observers is how the party is thinking about and planning for that day.
The Republican presidential primary this year was greeted by most political observers with a yawn. Ben Wittes stated that he considered the primary debates as significant as a race for high school class president and felt fully justified in not watching them. At an emotional level, I understand this sentiment. But I disagree. It is possible to glean, particularly from the first three Republican debates, insights into the current thinking of the GOP.
Much has changed in the world around the Republican Party. The interesting question is: What did the party change in response?
A first pass at an answer might be “not much.” Mainstream conservatism since William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan has consisted of a confrontational foreign policy, limiting government’s role in the economy with an eye to creating growth and advocating traditional conservative values in private life. These familiar themes not only dominated all three debates, they did so nearly to the exclusion of anything else.
The stubborn persistence of old ideas suggests that the GOP, for the moment, is pursuing a risky strategy. Despite its disastrous capture by Trump, the Republican Party does not seem to think it needs to change its basic message.
Some changes, however, did emerge. One of the most memorable exchanges occurred between former Vice President Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy posited that America has a “national identity crisis.” Pence countered that “We’re not looking for a new national identity. The American people are the most faith filled, freedom loving, idealistic, hard-working people the world has ever known” — a classic statement of the familiar moral majority conservatism.
Ramaswamy’s fascinating response was, “It is not ‘Morning in America.’ We live in a dark moment, and we have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold cultural civil war and we have to recognize that.” By directly negating Reagan’s famous slogan, Ramaswamy showed the need for ideological innovation.
Nikki Haley likewise started her closing statement at the third debate with an arresting statement: “The world is on fire.” Here, then, we have two candidates, one an interloper and one unimpeachably establishment, coopting Trump’s “American carnage” rhetoric.
It would be easy to dismiss such a change as merely stylistic or rhetorical, but it seems to reflect a substantially different idea about the mood of the country. We have seen establishment politicians struggle to coopt Trumpian language (I need hardly mention Marco Rubio), but these debates showed politicians becoming more sophisticated in the way they borrow. Whether they will be more effective remains to be seen.
Another significant moment came not from the candidates but from moderator Stuart Varney, whom I have always understood to be a hard-nosed, conservative business journalist. I was accordingly surprised to hear him speak directly to the issue of income inequality and at some length: “Together, the CEOs of General Motors, Ford and Stellantis make 336 times the number of rank-and-file workers. That’s just part of a wider income inequality trend in the country. The richest 1 percent now controls one-fifth of all income.” A well-informed person could be forgiven for thinking this was spoken by Bernie Sanders. Then again, it could almost be Trump.
Pence once again flew the old flag, noting that Republicans reject “class warfare.” Yet here, as so often throughout the debates, Pence seemed stale and behind the times. No other candidate mentioned “class warfare” or spoke reverently of the rich as job creators (though Ramaswamy did run on his business background). This absence suggests that the pro-rich rhetoric that was such a feature of the Bush and Obama eras may now be out of date.
The overall story of the Republican primary may be one of complacency, but a closer look reveals cracks forming beneath the candidates’ feet. The disconnect between the established Republican elites and their rank-and-file voters remains and will need to be addressed. The question of what form the new conservatism will take should occupy all those who wish to understand American politics. The old-time religion will undoubtedly continue to hold considerable political power, yet that power is clearly fading.
I suspect the GOP cannot defer the questions facing it forever, and the longer it defers them, the worse the reckoning will be.
David Ottlinger is a freelance writer focusing on politics and culture, especially from a philosophical perspective. Follow him @DavidOttlinger.