One person's brand has remade the Grand Old Party completely: Donald Trump.
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 by former members of the Whig, Democratic, and Free Soil parties who opposed the expansion of slavery into western territories. It has gone through several periods of evolvement:
- Abraham Lincoln's presidency led America through the Civil War.
- The pro-business era under Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover from 1896 to 1932.
- It fought the New Deal Coalition from 1932 to 1980, emphasizing business interests, conservative social values, and anti-Communism.
- From 1980–2008, the party embraced neoconservative thinking, insisting that America should be the world's police, a disease that afflicts the party to this day.
- During the Obama years, the rise of the Tea Party wing in the GOP minority fought Obama's policies tooth and nail as they transformed America like never before (Obamacare, DACA, DEI policies).
- The Trump era, 2016 - present.
The Neocon movement fought Trump at every turn during his first administration. Eliot Cohen, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, George Will, Bill Kristol, John Bolton, and Mitt Romney defected en masse from the GOP to mount a resistance that came to be known as the Never Trumper movement. Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley became recent converts. Every one of them has ridden off into the political sunset. If they have a political career left at all, the resurrection would have to be blessed by Trump.
As one of the wealthiest politicians ever to grace the American landscape, with golf resorts, luxury hotels, and apartments worldwide, Trump has been consistently shunned by the coastal elite. The treatment accorded to him—a person who made a name for himself hobnobbing with the elite as a dashing playboy in New York's real estate scene, a casino owner in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, and a star of a reality show on NBC/Universal—is a remarkable paradox. The Left's complaints—as repeatedly stated by President Biden in his 22-minute interview with Lester Holt on Monday—are rooted in Trump's political style, such as mean tweets that were inherently divisive. They contend that Trump exaggerates, lies, and hides the truth; he is not prone to accepting responsibility for his actions and is likely to blame someone else. The Left ardently believes that Trump threatens democracy, particularly his claims about election fraud and his response to the 2020 election results, a point Biden repeatedly made in the Holt interview.
The fascinating truth is that all of these charges, repeated over and over and over again and amplified through the media megaphone, have made Trump even more popular with the average American voter. A single impeachment would have ended a person's political future. Trump not only endured two impeachments but an 18-month-long scripted, partisan J6 investigation, the full wrath and fire of the federal government through an independent counsel, and a lawfare effort resulting in 93 criminal charges. It confounds the Left that none of these charges stick.
What a liberal does not understand is that the people making the charges are themselves inherently corrupt. It is this realization that the average American voter appreciates and appreciates very well.
The voter now knows that the Ukraine impeachment with Zelenskyy, orchestrated by Congressman Adam Schiff and Alexander Vindman, was a total hoax. The Biden administration and the neocons have sent over $200 billion to keep the military-industrial complex alive, yet Ukraine continues to lose territory to Russia. Ukraine continues to struggle with corruption at the highest levels of government.
Zelenskyy, whose term ended on May 19, continues to be treated by Washington as a royal, although he would probably lose reelection back home. It is little wonder that people do not buy the charge that Trump's phone call to Zelenskyy was so undemocratic or unprincipled that it warranted an impeachment.
On the lawfare front, Trump's wins have been nothing short of extraordinary. When Colorado, Maine, and Illinois tried to ban Trump from appearing on the ballot, the Supreme Court intervened, not in a liberal/conservative decision. By 9-0, the Court put an end to this state nonsense of interference. Biden conveniently avoided talking about this case, and Holt didn't challenge him.
The Court granted Trump 6-3 presidential immunity for official acts. This principle was in vogue for over 40 years after Nixon - and was needlessly challenged by the Biden administration. Again, this was not a conservative/liberal decision—it was simply affirming what was already established practice, a fact that the average voter sees clearly. Yet Biden repeatedly called out the Supreme Court's decision as six conservatives doing Trump's bidding. And Holt did not challenge him.
Finally, federal judge Cannon threw out the classified documents case against Trump, ruling that Jack Smith's very appointment violated the Constitution. To the average voter who does not understand the deep technical legal analysis in the judgment, the decision was nevertheless poetic justice. When Biden held on to classified documents—he was not even supposed to because he was then Vice President—his Special Counsel went so easy on him that Biden was not even indicted.
As Trump stands on the cusp of accepting the GOP's nomination for the third consecutive time - a record in recent memory - his critics are cursing under their breath. Teflon Don is in the spotlight of the world because of - not despite - all of their attacks and efforts. And when Trump survived an assassin's bullet and immediately had the presence of mind to rise and say, "Fight, fight, fight," before walking to his limousine under his own power, the image of him as a Lincolnesque leader in the minds of the voter got forever imprinted.
And now Trump, through his selection of JD Vance, a 39-year-old rags-to-riches personality, as his VP, is on the cusp of changing the GOP for multiple generations.
The GOP's new ideology under Trump is not Republican, Libertarian, Conservative, Liberal, or Independent. It is simply to Make America Great Again. The average voter feels that there's nothing wrong with that, given how hopelessly the current Beltway crowd has ransacked America's power and reduced its world standing.
Correction
The original article stated, 'The Court granted Trump 6-3 presidential immunity for legal acts.' It should be 'official acts' instead of 'legal acts,' and we made the change.
