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Will Trump Shatter the Party ofReagan?
The rogue candidate threatens the coalition of social, economic, and foreign policy conservatives.
S.V. Dáte@SVDATE
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March 30, 2016, 8 p.m.}
R on ald Re agan is long gone, but for dec ades Re pub lic ans have
con tin ued to revere his al leg or ic al threelegged stool: eco nom
ic, so cial, and for eign policy con ser vat ives, united as one to carry the
party to vic tory.
So what hap pens when real ityTV star and selfstyled “com monsense
con ser vat ive” Don ald Trump gets stew ard ship of the GOP? He in sists
that So cial Se cur ity and Medi care should be left un altered, de fends the
nonabor tion re lated work of Planned Par ent hood, and calls NATO ob
sol ete—thereby of fend ing all three ele ments of the Re agan trin ity.
“He shat ters the stool when he sits on it,” said Ari Fleis cher, a top aide to
AP Photo/Rusty Kennedy
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former Pres id ent George W. Bush. “It’s bizarre, be cause he has no prin
cipled, co her ent ideo logy that we’re used to…. It cer tainly won’t re semble
the stool any more.”
What last au tumn might have been an idle in tel lec tu al ex er cise is about
to be come, at least for “move ment” con ser vat ives, an ur gent ques tion. In
as little as two months, Trump may well be the pre sumptive pres id en tial
nom in ee and tit u lar head of the party of Re agan.
“At the most ba sic level, this is a party that be lieved it had a good shot at
keep ing the House and the Sen ate and win ning the White House,” said
Ramesh Pon nuru of the con ser vat ive Amer ic an En ter prise In sti tute.
“With him as the nom in ee, we have a shot at los ing all three. So yes, I
think it would be ser i ous trouble.”
For Re pub lic ans still in ter ested in the “smal ler gov ern ment, more free
dom” philo soph ic al un der pin nings of their party that stretch back to
Barry Gold wa ter’s 1964 can did acy, the pos sib il ity of a Trump nom in a
tion be comes even more un set tling.
“I don’t use the term lightly, but I really do think it cre ates an ex ist en tial
crisis for the Re pub lic an Party,” said Nor man Orn stein, a schol ar at AEI.
“He rep res ents so much that is ana thema to what has been the core set
of val ues to Re pub lic an lead er ship.”
With Trump al most cer tain to enter the sum mer con ven tion with the
most del eg ates thanks to his many primary vic tor ies thus far, Re pub lic
ans have two choices: Give Trump the nom in a tion, and make him the
face of the GOP, or give it to someone else, and likely drive his mil lions
of sup port ers away from the party, pos sibly for years.
“Either way, it brings down the cur tain not only on the Re agan party, but
the Gold wa ter party,” Pon nuru pre dicted.
What would come next is less clear, and would de pend partly on wheth er
the GOP nom in ee wins in Novem ber, and also on how the party lead er
ship goes about re pair ing the cracks. Thomas Mann of the lib er al Brook
ings In sti tu tion won ders if that’s even pos sible, giv en all that has
happened.
“It’s hard to see how they breathe new life in to a party that’s suffered a
hos tile takeover,” Mann said. “It al most looks like it’s time for a re place
ment party.”
A re in ven tion wouldn’t be the first for the party, which in its 160year
his tory has already un der gone at least two ma jor trans form a tions.
Foun ded in 1854 by ab ol i tion ists, Re pub lic ans came to be defined ini
tially by their first pres id ent, Ab ra ham Lin coln, whose struggle to hold
tially by their first pres id ent, Ab ra ham Lin coln, whose struggle to hold
the na tion to geth er was for dec ades re viled in much of the South as “The
War of North ern Ag gres sion.” The sub sequent Re con struc tion years,
over seen by Re pub lic an ad min is tra tions, ce men ted the Demo crat ic
Party’s dom in ance in South ern states, as did Re pub lic an ef forts in the
first half of the 20th cen tury to pass civilrights le gis la tion through Con
gress.
In that peri od, par tic u larly in the dec ades lead ing up to World War II,
the party aligned it self more closely with busi ness and fin an cial elites
while ad voc at ing re straint in for eign af fairs. Pres id ent Frank lin
Roosevelt’s ef forts to help Bri tain in the years pre ced ing Pearl Har bor,
for ex ample, were de rided as “Mr. Roosevelt’s war.”
The vic tory of Al lied com mand er Gen. Dwight Eis en hower over the GOP
es tab lish ment in 1952 and the start of the Cold War pushed the party to
a more in ter ven tion ist for eign policy po s i tion. But the more fun da ment al
shift fol lowed Demo crat ic Pres id ent Lyn don John son’s suc cess ful push
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Richard Nix on was able to cap it al ize on
white, work ingclass an ger to ward Demo crats, par tic u larly in the South,
and cobbled to geth er a new co ali tion that de livered Re pub lic ans the
pres id ency in five out of the next six elec tions.
It was a dra mat ic re cast ing: The party cre ated to end slavery had en gin
eered a “South ern Strategy” de pend ent on the states that had se ceded
from the Uni on. And as demo graph ic changes made the coun try less
white and moved states from Re pub lic an to tossup to Demo crat ic, the
GOP re li ance on the South grew ever more pro nounced.
In the 2012 pres id en tial elec tion, Re pub lic an nom in ee Mitt Rom ney won
206 elect or al votes, of which 118 came from the 11 states of the former
Con fed er acy—even though they ac count for only a third of the coun try’s
pop u la tion. Na tion ally, he won 59 per cent of the white vote, but only 16
per cent of the non white vote.
Yet the Re pub lic ans’ mes sage to their new base of dis pro por tion ately
South ern, pre dom in antly noncol legeedu cated whites has con sisted
largely of so cial and cul tur al cues—as sur ances that Re pub lic ans sided
with them on things such as pray er in schools, abor tion, and gun rights—
rather than eco nom ic themes.
That, in fact, was the thes is of Thomas Frank’s 2004 book, What’s the
Mat ter With Kan sas?, which ex plored why voters in that state typ ic ally
sup port Re pub lic an can did ates even though their eco nom ic in terests are
more in line with Demo crats.
What Trump has done with his can did acy is har vest many of those same
white, work ingclass voters but with the mes sage that his busi ness ex
per i ence will let him re store the prosper ity and status they have lost—all
per i ence will let him re store the prosper ity and status they have lost—all
mixed in with a sub text of stand ing against the “oth ers” who have been
chan ging Amer ica, such as Lati nos and Muslims.
To Brook ing’s Mann, Trump’s suc cess is jus ti fied comeup pance for a
party that has vil i fied the na tion’s first black pres id ent. “The Re pub lic an
Party in re cent years have set them selves up for this,” he said, point ing
out that Trump him self was a lead ing pur vey or of the the ory that Barack
Obama was not born in the United States and is there fore an il le git im ate
pres id ent. “They ef fect ively sanc tioned the most hate ful speech. Now
they’re in no po s i tion to con trol it.”
Party lead ers, though, did try to change the tone, at least for a while.
After Rom ney’s loss, the Re pub lic an Na tion al Com mit tee con duc ted an
“autopsy” that warned that the party had to im prove its out reach to non
white voters, and urged pas sage of an im mig ra tion over haul as a good
way to start. But that ef fort was blocked in the House by mem bers from
con ser vat ive, largely white dis tricts—a de cision that ap peared to be val
id ated by GOP suc cesses in the 2014 midterm elec tions.
“There was this think ing: We’ve got these voters no mat ter what. All
we’ve got to do is talk about the threat posed by the Kenyan so cial ist,”
Orn stein said.
Pon nuru, who ascribes Trump’s suc cess more to his ap peal to na tion al
ism than ra cial griev ance, nev er the less agrees that the party’s re li ance on
a taxcutori ented eco nom ic policy favored by the donor class rather
than the work ing class was a mis take. Re pub lic ans’ fail ure to pass a cred
ible al tern at ive to Obama’s Af ford able Care Act, for ex ample, will con tin
ue to hurt the party among those drawn to Trump.
“They’ll take af ford able health care over lim ited gov ern ment,” Pon nuru
said.
Yet re gard less of why and how Re pub lic ans got to this point, the path
for ward ap pears to de pend en tirely on the in di vidu al at the cen ter of
their cur rent pre dic a ment: Trump him self.
If he loses the nom in a tion, does he go away am ic ably, or blow up the
GOP on his way out? If he wins the nom in a tion but loses the gen er al
elec tion, does he aban don polit ics, or con tin ue to stir the pot with fre
quent speeches and TV ap pear ances?
“If Trump sticks around, it could have huge rami fic a tions, be cause it
would make it enorm ously dif fi cult for the party to re set,” said Fleis cher,
who was among the coau thors of the 2013 Growth and Op por tun ity Pro
ject re port.
ject re port.
And if Trump some how over comes his soar ing un pop ular ity with wo men
and non white voters and wins the pres id ency, that would bring an even
more fun da ment al rebrand ing of the GOP, Fleis cher said. “The party
be comes ba sic ally un re cog niz able,” he said. “Obama didn’t change any
thing. This would be change.”
Ad ded AEI’s Orn stein: “This is un charted ter rit ory for mod ern times. It’s
hard to see where this goes. … The bot tom line is you can not come out of
this with a thriv ing, in tact party.”
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