Donald Trump may have lost the election but he is winning the contest to shape the Republican Party in his own populist image.
Trump has been out of the White House for just two weeks, but during that time he has struck some big wins against Republicans who wanted to move on from the Trump era. As things now stand, Trump looks like he will remain a conservative kingmaker for the foreseeable future, having scared his would-be enemies away.
Just weeks ago, key Republican leaders, disgusted by Trump’s behaviour in inciting his supporters before the deadly Capitol riots, appeared to be looking beyond the Trump era. Trump’s strongest allies were deserting him.
Former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell believed Trump committed impeachable offences on that day and he said he was keeping open the option to convict the former president in a Senate trial. McConnell did not dispute widespread reports that he wanted Republicans to break decisively from Trump. That was then. McConnell has now abruptly fallen back in with Trump by voting against a Senate trial on the basis that he doesn’t believe a Senate trial of a departed president is constitutional.
Likewise Trump ally senator Lindsey Graham, who declared: “Count me out, I’ve had enough,” after the Capitol was stormed, is now back in the Trump fold. Graham now says of Republicans: “We’re going to need Trump and Trump needs us.”
Another Trump loyalist, house Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had declared that Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack on congress. McCarthy now says “everyone across this country” is to blame and last week he visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort to patch things up.
Former Trump cabinet member and likely 2024 presidential aspirant Nikki Haley, who claimed Trump would be “judged harshly by history’ now says to Trump’s critics: “Give the man a break.”
Whatever rebellion some Republicans may have been plotting against Trump has fizzled in fear. Trump has been working openly to punish the 10 Republicans in the house who voted for his impeachment, especially senior Republican Liz Cheney, who is now a pariah in the eyes of many in the party. Another Republican who voted to impeach Trump, Adam Kinzinger, now says his vote “could very well be terminal to my career.”
Trump has instructed his team to ensure that each of these house Republican rebels are all challenged in their next primary contests. That threat has been heard loudly in the Senate where Republicans fell in neatly behind Trump last week. No less than 45 of the 50 Senate Republicans voted that the impeachment trial was unconstitutional for an ex-president, a point of law on which legal experts are split.
By voting that the trial is unconstitutional, Republicans will avoid having to publicly judge the former president’s behaviour on its merits. While some senators may genuinely believe a trial is unconstitutional, others can use it as a political cover to avoid having to make an odious choice between defending Trump’s actions or risking his wrath.
The Democrats have also helped fuel this pro-Trump swing by pursuing the Senate trial, which serves to paint Trump as a martyr to his supporters.
But the biggest reason for this retreat by establishment Republicans is that Trump still commands enormous support from his base. He remains too strong to be crushed or cast aside. Polls show that between two-thirds and three-quarters of the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump believed that Joe Biden won the election unfairly and is therefore an illegitimate President.
Republicans are now so anxious to please Trump that they are refusing to distance themselves from one of Trump’s favourite crazies, congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene. Greene, a freshman from Georgia, sits on the lunatic fringe of the Trump support base, believing in the right-wing conspiracy movement QAnon. She has promoted theories that California bushfires were sparked by a space laser controlled by a Jewish banking family, that the Clintons had John F. Kennedy Jr killed and that the mass school shootings at Sandy Hook and Parkland Florida were staged.
But the ranking house Republican McCarthy has refused calls to distance either himself or the party from her views.
The New York Times is no friend of Trump but its editorial did make a fair point when it said: “The silence from Republican leaders (about Greene) has been deafening. That can’t continue if the party has any hope of reclaiming conservatism from nihilistic rot — something every American should be rooting for to maintain a healthy two-party system.”
Now dozens of Republicans in former president George W. Bush’s administration are reportedly leaving the party, dismayed by a failure of many elected Republicans to disown Trump.
It is early days, and the identity of the modern Republican Party is still a work in progress. But for now, Trump remains the king as he swats down any wannabe rebels with ruthless efficiency.
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