Beginning with the 1850s formation of Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party, the nation has undergone progressive and regressive political fluctuations and ideological governing transitions. Historically, democracy’s success has been due to admirable skills, wisdom, values and truth of the governing class seeking compromise, socio-economic advancement and political stability.
But Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman contends that in the last 25 years, “optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. … The public no longer has faith that people running things know what they are doing or … being honest.” A destructive populist temperament has fostered callous socio-political divisions of ideology, race, wealth and religion.
Columnist Anne Applebaum writes, “The new right … suspicious of rapid change in all its forms … want[s] to overthrow, bypass or undermine existing institutions, to destroy what exists. … to alter the rules of democracy so that they never lose power.” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write, “Republican politicians from Newt Gingrich to Donald Trump understood treating rivals as enemies can be useful — the pursuit of politics as warfare can be appealing to those who fear they have much to lose.”
Accordingly, the forward to The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” written by Vice President J.D. Vance highlights its cynical nihilism, “Circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay [sic] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
FBI Director nominee Kash Patel called to replace the current national security workforce with “people who won’t undermine the president’s agenda.” The Associated Press reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson “portrays himself as the ‘quarterback’ … executing the political plays called by the ‘coach,’ the president-elect.” Meanwhile, America’s democracy grounded on three separate but equal branches of government evolves into authoritarianism.
Democrats are conducting autopsies of their presidential election loss to recapture their working-class voter base. However, their loss was due to captivating messages of Republican religiously focused white identity politics, white socio-economic victimhood and fear of a declining Christian population and non-white political majority.
CNN exit polling asked, “Which qualities mattered most?” For President Donald Trump voters, they were “has ability to lead” and “can bring needed change.” But what changes? For Vice President Kamala Harris voters, they were “cares about people like me” and “has good judgment.”
Conspicuously, among whites without degrees, Trump voters were 69% men, 63% women, 87% evangelical, 73% Catholic and 81% Protestant. Harris’ majorities were Black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, Jews and agnostics. Notably, Trump’s white Christian majority represents the same centuries-long religious ethno-cultural racial divide.
Furthermore, 68% of whites without degrees earning less than $100,000 a year voted for Trump. Yet, this group’s family income, health care and well-being has suffered the most from Republican support of excessive wealth inequality and the party’s policies on Social Security, Medicare, public education, child care, food stamps, etc.
So how did Lincoln’s Republican Party become Trump’s party? During the 1940s, white Christian conservative Republicanism emerged as a backlash to President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, politically anchored by white Southern voters and safeguarding major corporations and wealthy elites from government restrictions and taxation.
Warren Weaver of The New York Times wrote that President Richard Nixon “want[ed] to see a Black Democratic Party … this will drive into the Republican Party precisely the kind of anti-Negro whites who will help constitute the emerging majority,” which it did.
Furthermore, in 1992 and 1996, Pat Buchanan failed to secure Republican presidential nominations. Chris Lehmann of The Nation wrote that Buchanan “launched the culture wars … and the organizing principle of conservative mass politics,” opposing multiculturalism, intervention in foreign affairs, abortion and gay rights. Buchanan “is the ideological forefather of the 21st century Republican Party.” Trumpism is “curdled Buchananism.”
Finally, New York Times columnist Carlos Lozada explains Trump’s successful three nominations and two elections: “Trump is very much part of who we are. … He changed the country by revealing it … revealing how normal, how truly American he is.”
Tom Wallace of Virginia Beach is a former vice president for academic affairs at Old Dominion University.