Political opinion informed by psychology by Hal Brown, MSW
In his New York Times column today, “If There Was a Republican Civil War, It Appears to Be Over: The party belongs to Trump for as long as he wants it” Jamelle Bouie make an excellent case that Donald Trump basically will own the Republican Party as long it suits him.
He notes how all the Senators who voted to convict Trump are being censured by their home state party apparatus. He goes on to say that if Trump wants to run again he is the sure primary winner.
If there’s a conflict, it’s less a war and more a small skirmish with an outmatched and outnumbered opponent. Seventy-five percent of Republicans want Trump to continue to “play a prominent role in the Republican Party,” according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University, and 87 percent say he should be allowed to “hold elected office in the future.” A recent survey from Morning Consult likewise shows Trump far ahead of his rivals in a hypothetical 2024 matchup, with 54 percent support versus 12 percent for the runner-up, Mike Pence.
Bouie concluded:
Just as it was five years ago, the hope is to come ahead somehow without confronting Trump, to win his voters without challenging his status among Republicans. Maybe, if Trump leaves politics to monetize his post-presidency, this will work. So far, that is not looking likely; Trump still speaks as if he is the party and the party is him. In a statement attacking Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, Trump bragged that he was responsible for what Republican success there was last year. “In 2020, I received the most votes of any sitting president in history, almost 75,000,000. Every incumbent House Republican won for the first time in decades, and we flipped 15 seats, almost costing Nancy Pelosi her job.”
With Trump’s grip on the party and its image what it is, the outcome we’re most likely to see is the one we already experienced: a Republican Party with Trump at its head, committed to nothing but his insatiable ego.
The last part of the sentence above sums it up. A Republican Party with Trump at its head will be committed to nothing but his insatiable ego. The question as I see it then becomes what will happen to Trump’s insatiable ego over the next two years and beyond. When and if he wants to run again he will have to spend a great deal of time and energy on his Second Coming, the man who Biden amusingly called “the former guy” in his Covid-focused town hall event in Wisconsin yesterday. Trump doesn’t care about what is called Trumpism by political scientists. To him Trumpism means worship of Trump. But for the rest of us it is important to consider the other Trumpism besides to version Trump needs to be a viable and visible force in our politics.
The usual source for definitions, Wikipedia, describes Trumpism thusly:
Trumpism is a term for the political ideology, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping power that are associated with the former 45th United States president, Donald Trump, and his political base. It is an American political variant of the far-right and of the national-populist and neo-nationalist sentiment seen in multiple nations worldwide from the late 2010s to the early 2020s. And has been applied to conservative-nationalist and national-populist movements in Western democracies.
This is an excellently sourced Wikipedia article to read with a good updated choice of images some from recent rallies and the Jan. 6th insurgency.
Some of the images illustrate Trump’s narcissism and authoritarianism:
If you to a web search for Trumpism and merely look at the title of the articles about Trumpism you will see that the consensus is that the movement will continue with or without Trump as a leader.
I think he could lose every lawsuit against him and revelations about his law breaking hitherto before only hinted at could be proved, or he could simply die, and it wouldn’t matter. Fighting lawsuits may keep him busy but I also think it will increase his desire to stay politically relevant. It is in his nature to lash out when attacked and by positioning himself as the leader of the GOP and the likely GOP candidate for 2024 he will be able to vent his anger.
Nobody is waiting in the wings to become another Trump but there are many people, some with actual political experience like Josh Hawley who graduated from Stanford and Yale Law, and some with some like Lara Trump, Donald Jr., Ivanka, Jared, and Marjorie Taylor Greene poised to vie for leadership doing battle with “old-timers” like Mike Pompeo, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, and Kevin McCarthy who tries his damndest to hog the spotlight. None of them have the star power of “the former guy” with the possible exception of glitterati girl Ivanka.
When we think of similar authoritarian regimes we tend to think first of the the Nazi’s being a cult led by one man, and then perhaps we think of Hirohito who was considered to be a living god. Of course we can go back in history to find many more examples where regimes and movements were built around the person and personality of the leader.
When the leader is gone the movements they led often fragment and lose their influence, at least for a period of time, but they can reemerge as the resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia in Europe demonstrates.
Trump shows no sign that he will be disappear from the scene. His ego won’t let him. He has a hunger for affirmation. Forget the clinical explanations for now, you’ve all read them. Put in everyday terms he gets off on being the center of attention, he gets a rush out of this. It goes to his head producing the kind of euphoria associated with cocaine. In a sense he’s become addicted to this experience.
Sticking with the psychological addiction analogy, not getting into whether it may have an actually neurological component involved changing the brain the way cocaine does, Trump has to be jonesing for attention. That Trump was going though withdrawal right about now is demonstrated by his “fiery attack” on Mitch KcConnell.
Whether Trump is actively involved in politics or not, whether he’s dead or alive, the movement he unleashed will persist. Unless and until shifting demographics lead to far right Republicans losing enough elections they will be a significant force in American politics. Even when they don’t have major influence in national politics they will dominate in some states with majority white populations making them decidedly uncomfortable places for liberals to live.
None of this is solely because of Donald Trump. He only unleashed and fostered the white nationalist and xenophobic movement. It doesn’t need an authoritarian leader to give it oxygen.
I only hope I live long enough to see Trumpists relagated to the status and relevance of members of the Flat Earth Society.
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The Poll:
Base your answer on whether Trump runs in the primary, not whether he wins the primary.