Think the GOP will swear off Trumpism when Joe Biden is sworn in?
Think again, warns Bill Straub, a Kentucky Journalism Hall-of-Famer.
“The Republican Party is the party of Donald Trump. It has transformed entirely from the Reagan profile to the Trump profile.”
Straub, a veteran print journalist, writes a liberal-leaning political column for KyForward.com and NKYTribune.com. He was a reporter in Frankfort and Washington before he retired.
Virtually every Republican on the ballot last November was a Trump loyalist. So are both Republicans running in Georgia’s Jan. 5 special Senate elections.
“Trump got 74 million votes this time, more than he got when he ran the first time,” Straub said. “I don’t know what would motivate the Republicans to go back.”
The road back would be a long one.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the GOP lopped off its moderate and liberal wings and started tacking rightward. Most notably, the party of “Lincoln and Liberty, too,” abandoned its historic commitment to federal civil rights activism.
Under Trump, the GOP is mainly what the old Southern segregationist Democrats were — the white folks party.
The Republican retreat on civil rights began under President Richard Nixon. The Republicans adopted the “Southern Strategy,” a scheme that exploited white southern Democratic resentment at the national party’s support for landmark federal legislation aimed at ending years of Jim Crow race discrimination in Dixie.
In the 80s, Ronald Reagan took the Southern Strategy nationwide, trotting out racially-charged code words like “welfare queens” implying that black women were scamming the public assistance system.
Trump turned Reagan’s racist dog whistle into a bullhorn.
“Reagan had many of the same views being espoused now,” Straub said. But, he added, the 40th president sought to put a genial face on his hard-right politics.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich opened the door to Trumpism, Straub said. Gingrich helped morph Reaganism into “a more aggressive, mean-spirited conservatism which has an attraction to a significant portion of the population today.
“The [Reaganite] philosophy is the same, it’s just the manner in which [Republicans] present it that’s different.”
Trumpism is essentially grievance politics, rooted in whites ’fear of losing their privileged top spot in society. “White folks, particularly white men, feel threatened by the increasing influence of African Americans, Latinos and women, black, white, whatever,” Straub said.
“They saw a black president. They see Latinos populating their communities, and they don’t like it.
“They’re gnashing their teeth over it and deciding the only way to maintain the status quo is to become much more aggressive.”
That attitude is reflected in the rise of violent white supremacist and white nationalist organizations on Trump’s watch. Trump has been hesitant to denounce these groups whose members see Trump as a kindred spirit and ally.
Trump’s embrace of the far-right and his pandering to racism and nativism led a sliver of Republicans — albeit almost none in elective office — to bolt for Biden.
Straub doubts the dissidents will try to start a third party. If they do, they likely won’t have much luck at the polls, he said.
Anyway, when Trump departs, Sen. Mitch McConnell will become the most powerful elected Republican, Straub said.
But he doesn’t see McConnell trying to wean the GOP off Trumpism. “He’s toed the Trump line for four years now. There’s no reason to think he’s going to change.”
Besides, Trump may run again in 2024. Even if he doesn’t, he’ll still be in the news as the titular head of the GOP.
“How can you ignore Trump? You might wish you could, but you can’t.
“If the New York Times and the Washington Post never print another word about Trump, his message and visage would show up all over the place because the media is not just newspapers, radio, and television any more.”
Trump will almost certainly keep his base revved up via his right-wing echo chamber: Fox News, radio, internet websites, Twitter, and the rest of Republican social media.
“There are enough Trump proponents to make sure his message gets out,” Straub said. “It’s bullshit, but [white] people believe it because they feel threatened.”
A footnote: The current mainstream media narrative has Republican lawmakers scared of crossing Trump. Supposedly, they fear his vengeful base and worry he’ll sic primary challengers on them. It seems just as plausible that many GOP office holders share Trump’s racism, sexism, misogyny, nativism, xenophobia, homophobia, and religious prejudice.
“Bigots-R-Us”
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