Most people don’t care about the major parties’ platform, not on the National level and certainly not, if they are even aware, on a state/local level. Nonetheless, the party platforms have to a large degree a way for the various factions, interests, and partisan coalition members to make sure that their voices are heard and that they are included valued members of the party coalition (even if the platform is moderate to their interests).
This has been true of the Democrats as well as the Republicans… until now.
The new 2024 GOP platform eschewed any of this and instead was, in essence, a lengthy and slightly more grammatically correct Truth Social post penned by Donald Trump. Many who are part of the Republican coalition, and the Right in general, including 2nd Amendment supporters and Pro-Life groups, were largely ignored. This happened not only with the platform, but with the GOP National Convention where being part of the Right’s, and thus GOP’s, coalition was demonstrated to be of second importance to praise of Donald Trump, regardless of whether the highlighted speakers were pandering or outright antithetical to social conservatives.
It’s not like Trump ever cared about the pro-life movement outside of transactional benefit. The pro-life movement and the religious right all accepted their 30 pieces of silver and has largely gone the way of Judas. Trump could kick a pregnant woman on 5th Avenue to the point where she miscarried and pro-life and/or religious voters would still vote for him. After all, what else are they going to do? Vote for Democrats? Heck, the Trump administration tried to pass Unconstitutional restrictions on bumpstocks during his first term, and pro-2A people are still going to vote for him en masse.
You could argue that aside from a small number of “National Conservatives” who treat Christianity as an identity rather than a faith and those who literally believe that God sent Trump as the only possible savior of America, the religious right has effectively been neutered if not euthanized. And therein the void has been filled.
What we are seeing here is a Hobbesian apotheosis: For the moment, the GOP is Leviathan with Trump as the kingly head.
This is simply the most overt sign of what we’ve seen happen for the past decade: Subservience to Trump the person, and the “MAGA”/”America First™” in which he cloaks himself (or other clock on his behalf). Not limited to the Republican Party, this yoking of the Conservative Movement and the attendant media, think tanks, and organizations to the firm hand of this new Leviathan.
This has been most notable with Right-leaning news sites, professional bloggers, and people on social media. Increasingly, all politics and issues are being filtered through the lens of Donald Trump, with all issues, no matter how tangential, revolving around him. Gone are the days when the online Right had many voices and could disagree courteously; now one’s status as ally or enemy is dependent upon homage given to a single man. This is not universally true, of course, and there are plenty who are the same independent thinkers they always were. But even then Trump, as a person, is often part and parcel of the offerings because there is do dissevering the “Right” from Leviathan’s Head.
This over-concentration of the Right under a single guiding hand (or at least the perception thereof) is certainly be praised by those who bemoan the “surrender caucus” or the purported “GOPe” and wish an iron fist—good n’ rusty—with which to smake the Woke Left. But there is a reason why we have the adage of not putting all out eggs in one basket.
The Left works, not under some unifying force or Hobbesian head, but as a Stand Alone Complex where many different groups work independently, but in such a way as to mutually benefit each others, in large part by weakening a common enemy. And there are a myriad of hydra heads that make this work, often with little to no fanfare.
The Right has its own version of this, with many different groups working on different aspects of individual interests. The 2nd Amendment movement, for example is a demonstration of how this can work for the Right—we’ve gone from a country where the 2nd Amendment wasn’t considered an individual right and gun control including banning civilian ownership of handguns was popular, to a country where most states are Constitutional Carry and the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the 2nd Amendment as securing an individual right as worthy as the rest of the individual protections of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
Not only would unifying myriad interests with myriad groups for each not be “fighting” like the Left does (as we are often told the Right must do, and do so without “rules”), but it would run counter to how successfully the Right has done it in the past, despite rumors to the contrary.
The danger for the Right is twofold: Those who use the gravitational pull of Trump within the GOP to keep themselves locked in his orbit and their interests/profits magnified by gravitic lensing, and the inevitable question of the aftermath. The first of these concerns is more varied than some singular trepidation of the political fabric that makes up the right, with the main elements so involved being the true-believers, the grifters, and the slow-marchers through the conservative institutions.
One of the main differences between the Left and the Right is that the well off on the Left make money to donate to and further Leftist causes, while those on the Right further Rightward causes with the expectation of making money. This results in the empowerment of grifters who use Trump as a shield. The GOP’s grifter problem is nothing new and predates Donald Trump. This group came to prominence by coopting the “Tea Party” label for themselves. The Tea Party was an epiphone and clarion call that naturally arose in response to Obama’s first years as President. But plenty of people formed political action committees and other assorted groups under the Tea Party banner and used it as a shield from criticism, much as the use Trump now. Some might imbibe the snake oil they sell, but sell it they do.
The second danger is the inevitable question of what happens when the head is gone. Even given a long and healthy life, Trump will not live forever. The attempts by many Republican candidates to replicate his success have failed miserably in state after state. Indeed, dissevered from Leviathan’s body, the general electoral rejects the entreaties of “MAGA” and Trump-style candidates like the ingrown toenail clipping of Donald Trump that they are. The grifters, of course, will find themselves another grift and continue raising money and gaining influence one way or another. But happens with the true believers and the slow-marchers? Those who took over many conservative institutions (thus proving that Robert Conquest was an optimist) will certainly have enough time to entrench themselves, though what can be taken can be taken away, especially without the true believers to support them.
It is these true believers in Trump, and exclusively Trump that become the big question of “what then” in a post-Trump GOP and post-Trump Conservative Movement. In many state and local parties, the central committees have devolved into Trump fan clubs with those in power solely based on the true believers showing up and keeping out anyone who isn’t sufficiently obedient to those who claim to speak for and on behalf of Trump. Some will continue on in one fashion or another, but what will the rest do without the locus of their politics there to give hope and promise of change?
The GOP and the Conservative Movement more broadly may end up spending quite a while in the political wilderness once Trump is gone and a twitching body is all that is left.
Let not the temptation for short term potential victory via a concerted guided blow against the raged-upon machine result in an all-or-nothing gamble where the proffered option of “nothing” would result in the hope of a twilight from a night that wanes and wanes but brings not day.
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