Donald Trump may have hijacked the Republican party, suggests The New Republic’s Brian Beutler, but he hasn’t changed its bigoted course -- he’s just put the pedal to the metal. According to Beutler, Trump’s campaign has made clear, “even among many conservatives who once denied it,” that “millions of white people believe it’s important to rally behind politicians who support policies that directly or indirectly penalize minorities—and that those politicians happen to be members of one party.”
But even if Trump gets routed in November, argued Beutler in a Tuesday article, “the incentives in Republican politics would still point to race-baiting, conspiracy peddling, and appeals to white-male grievance as useful tools of political battle.” If the GOP wants to separate itself from “Trumpism,” he wrote, it must “take at least these three steps” (bolding added; italics in original):
1. Strengthen the post-Trump Republican Party so its agenda isn’t determined entirely by external institutions, like Fox News or the Club for Growth.
…The rise of super PACS (and super-campaigns) in the post-Citizens United era, along with the rise of the conservative counter-establishment, have rendered parties relatively helpless to stop forces like Trump…
2. End movement-conservative dominance over the Republican policy agenda.
Ironically, the power of the conservative movement may be the one thing preventing Donald Trump from cobbling together a majority coalition this year, despite his appeals to bigotry. Its influence can be detected in Trump’s tax-reform plan, which is tilted overwhelmingly to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations; in his pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act; and in his disinterest in advancing labor interests…
3. Penalize both undisguised racist pandering like Trump’s, and the subtler appeals to white resentment that Republicans have long used.
Before Trump was calling unauthorized Mexican immigrants rapists, everyone in Republican politics was calling them “illegals,” or worse. Republicans framed the last election as a battle between “makers” in their overwhelmingly white party, and “takers” in the ethnically diverse Democratic party.
Beutler then doubled back to his first point about the relative weakness of the institutional GOP, noting that “the existing paradigm isn’t shaped by talking points that can be easily edited and put back ‘on message.’ It’s shaped by conservative news and entertainment figures who make money affirming white suspicions about minorities and urban enclaves, and by the self-flattering ideology of the Republican donor class.”
