Why The GOP Is All Trumpism, All The Time
There's no saving this party
When news broke that former FBI Director and special counsel Robert Mueller had died, Donald Trump responded in a predictably horrible way: “Robert Mueller just died,” Trump crowed on social media. “Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Trump is the worst person who ever lived without a funny mustache, and not surprisingly, there are serious consequences to putting him in a position of great power (again). Former Tea Party Republican turned Anti-MAGA Democrat Joe Walsh lamented last week, “Donald Trump has taken America, a country the rest of the world always loved and/or respected, and turned it into a country the rest of the world now despises, laughs at, and wants nothing to do with.”
I agree with America’s current, richly deserved global reputation, but I think blaming Donald Trump entirely lets America off the hook. Trump is definitely a cancer of the body politic, but he’s a self-inflicted disease. Walsh would probably agree with this diagnosis, as he’s described Trump as “the ugly CONSEQUENCE of a broken politics & a dangerously divided country.”
The only reason Trump achieved and maintains power is because Americans gave it to him willingly. You or I might not have voted for him, but he won two free and fair elections — no conspiracies here, please — within a democratic system of government Americans insist is awesome.
Those of us who voted for Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris did the best we could in a two-party system. It was rank-and-file Republicans and checked-out swing voters serving as electoral chaos agents who put Trump in the White House — twice, for God’s sake. I can proudly say I only saw Josie and the Pussycats once (in a movie theater — we don’t need to get into how many times I watched it in my own home).
It’s been 10 years since the Republican establishment put up a failed fight against the rising MAGA movement. On March 18, 2016, Mitt Romney — who’d already publicly trashed Trump — announced on social media that it was so important to stop Trump he was willing to do the unthinkable, cast a ballot for Sen. Ted Cruz, who everyone hated. At this point in the Republican primary, Cruz was a distant second with no realistic chance of defeating Trump. Romney even admitted that voting for Cruz was a last-ditch effort to deny Trump a delegate majority and force an open convention where they could “nominate a Republican.” (Note that Romney doesn’t actually endorse Cruz as the eventual nominee. He was just a means to an end.)
Romney wrote:
Today, there is a contest between Trumpism and Republicanism. Through the calculated statements of its leader, Trumpism has become associated with racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity and, most recently, threats and violence. I am repulsed by each and every one of these.
His words were disturbingly prescient: Trumpism is a cult of personality rooted in racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity, and political violence that has escalated beyond mere threats. It’s now policy. Trumpism utterly subsumed and dominated whatever was decent (or at least roughly legal) within Republicanism, leaving behind only a hollowed-out husk that Trump wears as a political skin suit.
In a classic scenery-chewing monologue from The Devil’s Advocate, Al Pacino’s Satan boasts, “Who in their right mind could possibly deny that the 20th Century was entirely mine? All of it! Mine. I’m peaking!” Donald Trump could similarly gloat about the past decade. (Watch below.)
Romney carried the last flag of his idealized Republicanism during his single Senate term, and he left office in fear of Trump’s MAGA goons. Even prior to 2016, what Romney would later call “Trumpism” was always more powerful than “Republicanism.” Romney personally fed the beast when he ran for president in 2012, hoping he could pacify the base long enough to win the election and then mostly ignore them all. That approach worked in the days before right-wing media became a 24-hour, not-so-pretty hate machine.
During an appearance last September at Drew University, Romney said somberly, “There are aspects of our society right now that are troubled and broken and one, certainly, is the vitriol and the vile rhetoric that sometimes is launched at people who are different than ourselves whether because of their beliefs, or religion, or ethnicity, or sexual orientation. We have to get along.”
This is the society Trump voters willingly fostered. Romney might have opposed Trumpism but he couldn’t bring himself to fully support Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, who were the last women standing against Trump in 2016 and 2024.
Just a few weeks before the 2024 presidential election, Romney explained why he wouldn’t endorse Harris: “I want to continue to have a voice in the Republican Party following this election, because I think there’s a good shot the Republican Party is gonna need to be rebuilt and reorientated either after this election, or [if] Donald Trump is reelected, after he’s president.”
Of course, Trump was re-elected and is currently setting the world on fire (in the bad way) as president. Yet Romney remains mostly silent or, perhaps more aptly, silenced — his voice within the party has barely a whisper of influence. I don’t hear any obvious sounds of construction as Romney “rebuilds and reorientates” the GOP as Trump’s approval plummets. That’s a problem because there are bad actors on the right actively working to seize the MAGA mantle from Trump. The many disaffected Trump voters might reject everyone associated with the current administration, particularly Marco Rubio and JD Vance, but that doesn’t mean they’ll support the Democratic nominee, no matter how reasonably centrist or gratuitously anti-trans. They could all very well flock to the burgeoning Tucker Carlson wing that rejects Trump’s ongoing war in Iran and unwavering relationship with Israel. Such a coalition is hardly a restored Republicanism but rather a different shade of Trumpism.
The Democratic Party has more than enough room for pro-democracy center-right voters and politicians, like Romney himself. His foreign policy views more closely align with mainstream Democrats than the “American First” Republicans and Trump’s violent authoritarianism. (Watch below.)
Of course, Third Way centrists could force out every Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Republicans like Romney still wouldn’t join their club. But as long as America remains a two-party system of government, broadening the Democratic Party’s coalition doesn’t necessarily resolve the larger problem. Trumpism forever defines one party. If there’s a growing battle within those ranks, it’s not over the movement’s soul, as it has none. Whoever prevails will still lead a party that’s totally hostile to liberal democracy. “Republicanism,” as Romney defines it, is dead, but if he wants to restore the free world’s respect for America, he’ll eventually have to join Walsh in the only party left to do anything about it.
The Republican party is dead, which no one should mourn really. They were racist, misogynistic, anti worker and imperialist. That leaves a lot of the old Republican guard-the insufferable Mitt Romney included-wandering the desert. But a huge mistake made by both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris was assuming most of these guys were ripe for picking *as Democrats*, and that was fatal IMO. The Romneys and Cheneys of the world may despise Trumpism, but they flatly hate Democrats more. That is shocking and uncomfortable but it's a truth Dems seem unable to come to terms with and worse, do anything about.
Trump is the inevitable end state of the Republican party. He didn't even change much about them. Not on a fundamental policy level. All he did was give them permission to take the mask off and be themselves.