There’s No Going Back To ‘Normal’ After Trump. The Republican Party Is Changed Forever
Republicans who don’t like Trump want to go back to 'normal,' but the old GOP is dead. Trump made a new party, and that is the party of the future.
Donald Trump is not a Republican. He never was before, and he is not one now. As the nation speeds toward Nov. 3, members of the GOP have been all over the board with predictions about the outcome, but some prominent Republicans have been consistently negative about Trump’s prospects and even hopeful for his defeat.
Peggy Noonan penned an archetypal anti-Trump article this month, titled “Biden, Pence and the Wish for Normalcy.” Noonan mused almost longingly that America might be headed toward an unprecedented landslide in favor of Joe Biden. If this happens, she said, one of the primary reasons will simply be “that [Biden] is normal … and people miss normal so much.”
Noonan, like many Republicans who don’t like Trump, wants to go back to normal. The reality is we are never going back to “normal.” The old Republican Party is dead. Trump made a new party, and that is the party of the future.
The Old GOP Is Dead
In 2016, Trump hijacked the Republican Party. Although he was billed as Republican, the support propelling him to victory was a new configuration of the electorate. Many mainstream Republicans still don’t understand this, but no other GOP candidate was going to win in 2016. Trump won because he was not actually a Republican.
Both the Republican and the Democratic parties are in the midst of internal civil wars. The extreme left wing of the Democratic Party is hurtling toward socialism and the destruction not only of statues but of American values and the fundamental principles of this country. Indeed, the escalating rhetoric currently employed by the left historically does not just silence dissent, it eventually seeks to eliminate the dissenters. America is in a struggle not only for its identity, but for its life.
While the left remakes itself, Republicans are engaged in their own struggle. When Trump won the White House, many of the anti-Trumpers of the Republican Party pivoted on a dime. For most, it wasn’t a unity move, but a power play for survival. Trump won, so the GOP decided to ride that wave. They stacked the White House with their people, promoted mainstream Republicans toward presidential appointments, and benefited as best they could from the electoral upset, but they never coalesced behind Trump or his new party’s plan for American renewal.
Both the NeverTrumpers and the “ReluctantTrumpers” are hell-bent on holding out until Trump is out of office to return to the “normal” times for which Noonan yearns. What all Republicans need to realize is that the party, as it was, is dead. Its leaders lost the GOP’s soul by following globalist policies and pursuing their personal wealth at the expense of the American people.
While those Republicans were busy chasing their own interests and melding into a ruling elite in Washington, the country, and indeed the world, changed. What has come to be in the GOP’s stead, and what will continue to develop, is a new party. Trump is not a fluke president. He unified a movement and formed a new party that will continue on, even after he leaves office.
The Party of Trump Isn’t All Republicans
The makeup of Trump’s party is new. He didn’t win in 2016 only by motivating greater Republican turnout. Trump flipped voters, pulling them from across the aisle. This excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article provides a striking example:
‘What happened in 2016 is [Trump] got a great many people who had supported Barack Obama and Democrats in the past to vote for him,’ Republican strategist Whit Ayres told me earlier this week by phone. ‘Trumbull County in northeast Ohio is my classic example. Obama beat [Mitt] Romney there by 22 percentage points. Trump beat [Hillary] Clinton there by seven — a 29-percentage-point turnaround. So it was far more changing the allegiance of existing voters rather than generating a substantial turnout of new voters.’
Making this even more clear, after one of his recent rallies in Florida, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel reported that “31.8% [of attendees] were NOT Republicans. 16.3% were Democrat. 24.4% did not vote in 2016. 14.4% did not vote in the last 4 elections.”
Trump’s new party cuts across traditional party lines and draws from every socioeconomic stratum in America. Although Trump’s base remains the strong conservatives who once vitalized the old Republican Party, he has attracted new voters among blue-collar Democrats, immigrants, and minorities. What are the core values of this new Party of Trump?
The “Make America Great Again” slogan captures the spirit that unites these people. Trump’s party retains the core family values of the old GOP but with an additional and robust focus on economic nationalism, strong sovereignty and national security, and smart foreign policy. The people in Trump’s party are risk-takers and wealth-builders, and they truly live the American ideals of independence and free thought.
Trump’s “Promises Made, Promises Kept” theme is a direct rebuke to the years of betrayal by Washington elites, years of big social and economic pledges from politicians on the campaign trail followed by inaction toward those promises or disloyalty to those principles following a successful election. The Party of Trump isn’t interested in politicians who just talk, or even those who merely take some action. This new party wants someone who will deliver.
Never Trumpers Want Their Sinecures Secured
The people who oppose Trump have something in common too. They are predominantly takers. They don’t build; instead, they want the safe route to success. This type of person can also be found in every stratum of society, from politicians like Joe Biden and Mitt Romney, to the middle-class people with safe corporate jobs who have no skin in the game, to the poor who would rather get a handout than a hand up.
The NeverTrumpers within the Republican Party are working hard against the president and his coalition. Just last week, the New York Times highlighted the organized elements of this insurgency in an article titled “The Crowded, Competitive World of Anti-Trump GOP Groups.” Leading the pack are the Lincoln Project, founded by Rick Wilson, George Conway, and their ilk, and Reclaim Our Party, a super PAC run by Greg Schott, “who sold his business software company to Salesforce in 2018 for a reported $6.5 billion” and has poured $1 million into targeted ads trying to convince soft Republicans to vote against Trump.
The type of Republican who does not believe in Trump does not understand how the world has changed and cannot face the crisis we are in now. In addition to those like Noonan, who yearn for a long-abandoned sense of normalcy, they commonly come in one of two other flavors: the corrupt self-interested and the weak. Many of these figures want politics to revert to its former glory, when they held power and made money. Others can’t stand up to the assault of the left because they want to be perceived as having that most-prized trait: gravitas.
Trump’s Is the Party of Fighters
Four years ago, Trump understood something had to change in America, and now it is clear we are in more of a battle than we ever imagined. The unfolding facts of the elite bureaucracy’s attempted coup and the radical resolve of the far-left to destroy our institutions, our history, and perhaps us, too, requires a new kind of Republican.
Politicians today must be fighters. Although Trump is unique in his style, every politician who successfully follows after him in this new party will need to show Americans that he or she is willing to fight for the good of the nation with the same uncompromising and aggressive resolve. Politicians who can take on our new party’s platform will be winners in America.
The old Republican Party is dead. Trump supporters have witnessed the corruption at home and understand the threats we face from abroad, and we see that politics has changed. We cannot go back to “normal” if we want to turn this ship around. Trump’s new party is composed of people who still believe in the American dream for themselves and for each other. This new party is ready to do the difficult work necessary to peacefully but decisively, and without apology or compromise, return this country to its founding principles.
Be wary of the negative assaults of otherwise “good” Republicans, and don’t let them dissuade you. When the chaos of this current realignment settles, it will be clear that they aren’t in our party. Their party failed. Ours is going to lead America back to prosperity and encourage a global movement toward national sovereignty and freedom.
