Live from Trumpland: Leigh Ann Caldwell and Benjy Sarlin: What Will Happen to the GOP after Trump:
The GOP for years was a diverse but sturdy three-legged stool of security hawks, tax cutters and religious conservatives....
Within that coalition, stakeholders might jostle for prominence but generally got along, united by the common goal of winning elections.... Then came Trump.... The celebrity candidate challenged the idea that policy proposals even mattered: His own positions were far from consistent; he shifted regularly, even on signature issues; and he scoffed at the need for depth or nuance. The thrice-married candidate’s checkered personal history and crude rhetoric flew in the face of the party’s religious, conservative image. And his appeals to bigotry forced some Republicans to consider whether the left’s portrayal of the GOP as the party of white resentment was more accurate than they had once thought....
Whether or not Trump prevails in November, the GOP is set for a rebuilding process like none in recent memory.... We asked more than a dozen prominent minds in the Republican Party... to assess the impact of Trump’s emergence.... Four broad paths emerged.... Welcome to Choose Your Own Adventure: Republican Party edition....
Path One: Trump Takes Over.... The current path is the one Trump offers: The Republican Party remade in his image... champion blue-collar white workers and lean heavily on fear and resentment to excite small donors, recruit volunteers and motivate supporters. Politicians in Trump’s Republican Party would showcase their opposition to illegal immigration on economic, cultural and security grounds while casting suspicion upon Muslims at home and abroad. Most claims of racial inequality would be brushed aside as divisive. Leaders would be unapologetically brash in the face of “political correctness.” A new “America First” foreign policy would push back against free trade agreements, military alliances and the U.S.-led international institutions that enforce these arrangements. The party would table old arguments over shrinking government and reforming entitlements, urging robust government intervention instead to help workers left behind by economic changes....
Path Two: Refined Trumpism.... Reformers’ suggestions include a more skeptical eye toward immigration, new tax credits to raise working class incomes and an openness to subsidized health insurance and child care. Reformers’ immigration positions are still a far cry from Trump’s. There are no calls for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants or giant walls. The focus instead would be on preventing future illegal immigration and revamping the legal visa system to reduce the number of workers competing with Americans for jobs. “I think the age of mass migration has to come to an end,” David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said. “I think the Republican Party also needs to make its peace with universal health care coverage.” One crucial prescription a number of reformers have named: Abandoning the party’s never-ending quest to slash taxes for the rich.... The hope, reformers say, is that by rallying around a worker-focused economic program while ditching Trump’s bigotry and misogyny, the party could convince minorities, women and young voters to give the GOP a second look.... Appealing to voters’ financial bottom line instead of white resentment is a winning strategy if the bottom line was what drove them to support Trump. But what if white resentment was what actually brought them to his rallies?....
Path Three: The Party Establishment Wins: If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s his professed deep disdain for the political establishment.... Following a Trump loss, the donor class would point to the election results as proof that his coalition of working-class, less-educated white men doesn’t spell victory in a general election. They would dismiss the policies that Trump championed, insisting voters don’t support trade restrictions, mass deportations, a Muslim ban or preserving entitlements. “We told you so,” the donor class would argue. And they’d be energized and emboldened to restore the GOP to its former self: A pro-business, anti-tax party, perhaps offering minor concessions for the new generation. “I suspect much of the GOP, like what they used to say about the Bourbons of France, is that they’ll learn nothing and forget nothing,” Erick Erickson, founder of the conservative media site TheResurgent.com, said....
Path Four: The Stalemate.... No one faction competing for prominence in the Republican Party gets to claim victory, continuing a years-long stalemate within the party.... “I think it’s highly likely that instead of a debate that could have been roughly settled by 2020, we’re likely to have a much longer and much more difficult debate that could very well include more losses at the presidential level until they get it right,” Olsen said.... To Sullivan, Trump’s supporters weren’t paying much attention to his heretical breaks from longstanding conservative ideas. They were just mad. “Anger is not an ideology,” Sullivan said.... Many in the party echo Sullivan, saying they are reluctant to predict major changes in response to Trump without proof there’s a movement beyond the man. It’s not like the party’s current iteration is such a disaster, after all: Republicans have had tremendous success at the state level and currently control the House and Senate.... In the end, if the party is to accept its many factions and encourage tolerance between different camps, the next goal could be to broaden the definition of conservatism rather than seek out its purest, most Reaganesque form...
