In January 2022, an NBC poll asked GOP voters whether they considered themselves to be ‘more a supporter of Donald Trump or more a supporter of the Republican party?’ In response, 56% prioritised the party and 36% Trump. A year earlier the same question had the numbers even at 46% each. These numbers suggest some loosening of the former president’s grip on the GOP, yet his continuing presence is most unusual. In another early 2022 poll 50% of Republicans and Republican leaning independents named Trump as their preferred party nominee in 2024. In January 1982 or January 1994 there was no clamour amongst Democratic and Republican party loyalists for the return of Jimmy Carter or George Bush Snr respectively following their one-term presidencies.
Scholars continue to argue about whether the former reality television star’s presidential triumph in 2016 was a one-off aberration. Did it reflect a very particular political moment as two deeply unpopular major party candidates battled in a toxic atmosphere throughout a campaign infused with sexism, or was that toxicity a product of longer-term underlying trends? Trump’s capture of the Republican nomination in 2016 was certainly unexpected, and shocked much of the conservative establishment, yet if the messenger was initially an unwelcome outsider, it is possible to see the message as the culmination of many years of right-ward populist and illiberal travel.
A reminder that the politics of personal destruction were rife decades before the arrival of Donald Trump includes Newt Gingrich’s 1990s embrace of political conflict as no-holds barred culture wars Yet, prior to 2016, the party’s presidential nominee had been an established if not always establishment figure. Reagan’s emergence in 1980 was a surprise to much of the outside world but he had been a high profile player in GOP circles for some time and had nearly captured the nomination in 1976. Subsequent nominees, Bush Snr, Dole, Bush Jnr, McCain and Romney all paid more homage to Reagan’s small government conservatism than Eisenhower’s accommodation to the New Deal, but that also meant that they all operated within an identifiable conservative ideological framework. Opponents complained that this sometimes included racist populist dog whistles. The National Populism on offer from Trump in 2016 had a different flavour as the candidate turned the volume up well beyond whistling and blasted out messages that were denounced by the party’s previous Vice-Presidential nominee as being “like the textbook definition of a racist comment”.
Nevertheless, there is a school of thought that argues Trump’s populist rhetoric did not translate in populist governance. Instead, it proposes that the efforts to implement such an agenda were undone by his own extreme administrative incompetence. This in turn exacerbated the institutional fragmentation which plagues all presidential efforts to fulfil their campaign promises. Hence, Trump’s signature legislative achievement was a set of tax cuts – a policy fully in line with Reaganism and the wishes of more traditional Republican grandees.
Such a focus, however, may underplay Trump’s longer term impact. First, he decisively settled some long-running internal GOP policy debates, not least the division over immigration policy. In 1986 Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which amongst other things, included a pathway to legal status for many undocumented immigrants. In his second term President George W Bush advocated for similar measures and, in 2013, 14 Republican Senators signed on to a bipartisan bill that contained comparable elements. Always more the preserve of the party’s elite, that approach is increasingly taboo. The restrictionist sentiments of party’s base, so explicitly articulated by Trump, now dominates.
Second, in collaboration with the party’s establishment leaders, President Trump cemented in a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that could last for a generation. The real power player behind this achievement for the conservative movement was then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. For months he blocked Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to succeed Antonin Scalia after the latter’s unexpected death in 2016 on the grounds that a justice should not be confirmed in an election year. Next, after Trump had nominated replacements for both Scalia and the retiring Anthony Kennedy, the White House and McConnell rushed through the nomination and confirmation of justice Amy Coney Barrett. This was to replace ‘liberal lion’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her death a mere 35 days before the 2020 presidential election.
Third, Trump’s continuing influence over the party is illustrated by the numbers of party identifiers who believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Even on the day that the deeply shocking events of January 6th 2021 unfolded, 147 elected Republicans chose to ignore the facts and embrace the ‘Big Lie.’ It is not simply that many Republican identifiers still claim to believe the ‘lie’, but that in many states there have been concerted attempts to pass laws that empower partisan bodies to challenge the legitimacy of vote counts. These efforts go beyond the voter restriction measures, anti-democratic though those already are, that have become increasingly common in GOP controlled states in recent years. The new endeavour offers real potential to overturn the will of voters who have been able to participate.
At this stage it remains uncertain whether Trump will choose to run again in 2024. Even if he does not, his brand of politics will live on, embraced by emerging potential candidates such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. In the meantime, Trump’s influence will be tested in some of the 2022 Republican Party primaries as candidates he has endorsed compete for votes. In some cases, there has been an unseemly competition to be the Trumpiest candidate. The GOP nomination race for the open Senate seat in Ohio is a case in point. Perhaps the most interesting example is in Georgia where Trump has backed former Senator David Perdue in his challenge to incumbent Governor Brian Kemp. Kemp’s sin was not a policy based aberration from Trumpian principle but his refusal to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential result in the state. In a twist, and a challenge to Trump, the Republican Governors Association has backed Kemp. Polls suggest a close race between the two.
One irony is that many Democrats feel that their prospects are enhanced when Trump has a higher profile. They might reflect that a majority believed that to be the case in 2016. That view was mistaken then and however far short Trump fell in turning his populist rhetoric into governing reality his legacy goes beyond standard measures of presidential achievement. Trump’s personal longevity as a political force is uncertain and there are some signs that his hold over the GOP maybe slightly eroding, but his provocations intensified the divisions in an already divided polity in ways that will be extremely difficult to heal.
Dr Clodagh Harrington, Associate Professor in American Politics, De Montfort University, and Dr Alex Waddan, Associate Professor in American Politics and American Foreign Policy, University of Leicester.