Why the Populist GOP Shift Will Outlast Trump

For a new book on the American electorate, Justin Gest asked white voters if they would consider voting for a hypothetical third party with a platform similar to the one offered by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The platform included a commitment to “stopping mass immigration, providing American jobs to American workers, preserving America’s Christian heritage, and stopping the threat of Islam.” The share of white Americans who would consider voting for that party is eye-popping— 65 percent.

 “If Trump were the whole story, and his message didn’t matter, then Republicans could dismiss this election as an anomaly.”

That percentage just happens to be almost the exact figure that Trump must hit among white voters to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton if all else remains the same from the 2012 election. Based on exit polls from that race, Trump would squeak out a popular vote victory — just barely — if he won 64 percent of the white vote and Clinton won the same share of the non-white vote that President Obama carried four years ago.

It’s a tall order. But Gest’s findings, published in “The New Minority: White Working-Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality,” suggests that it is possible. It also suggests that the seeds for Trumpism are planted within the Republican Party — regardless of whether or not the GOP nominee wins in November.

“This is most immediately important to the Republican Party,” Gest, a public policy professor at George Mason University, wrote recently in Politico. “If Trump were the whole story, and his message didn’t matter, then Republicans could dismiss this election as an anomaly.”

But Gest’s research and a host of similar findings signal that Trump won the GOP nomination because he struck a chord on immigration and trade. His win also indicates that his deviations from party orthodoxy on the size of government and his promises to protect rather than cut Social Security have a more receptive audience among Republicans than GOP leaders might have thought.

“My view is that economic patriotism and ethno-nationalism across the West, and, indeed beyond the West as well, now have the whip hand over transnationalism and any Clinton-Bush-Obama New World Order,” conservative commentator Pat Buchanan wrote in an email response to questions from LifeZette.

Buchanan, who twice ran for president on a platform similar to Trump’s, argued that the Republican nominee has given voice to populist forces that are surging in the West.

“Whether he wins or loses, they’re not going away. For Trump did not create them,” he wrote. “He gives voice to them and rides them.  But these forces will call into the arena new champions in the future in the USA as they have all over Europe. As for the Republican Party, Bush-Republicanism is dead. Trumpism is now half the party and there is no energy or fire in the old Republican agenda.”

Is GOP Populism ‘Trump-Specific’?
Not all experts are convinced Trump has permanently altered the course of the Republican Party, however. Christopher Devine, a political science professor at the University of Dayton, said part of Trump’s success in the primaries was due to Trump himself.

“It’s one of the most interesting questions of the election: How much of this is a lasting change in party policy?” he asked. “My working theory is that a lot of this is Trump-specific.”

Devine pointed to one notable moment from Trump’s acceptance speech in Cleveland last month, when the nominee spoke up in favor of protecting the LGBT community. The line got a loud cheer from the crowd.

“I wonder how many things another candidate could get away with what Trump says,” he said.

Devine said there remains a large bloc of Republicans who favor the internationalist brand of conservatism that has dominated the party for several decades. That is part of the reason why Trump has had trouble unifying the party, he said. He said any future nominee will have difficulty closing that rift.

“Trumpism has, at least for the time being, supplanted Reaganism as the organizing principle for at least part of the Republican Party.”

“A lot of this will depend on whether Trump wins,” he said. “Which is the bigger group to disappoint?”

Craig Shirley, who has written several biographies of Ronald Reagan, said Trump tapped into sentiment that his primary competitors ignored.

“Nobody else is speaking to it,” he said.

Trump is redefining the party, Shirley added.

“Trumpism has, at least for the time being, supplanted Reaganism as the organizing principle for at least part of the Republican Party,” he said.

Political observers frequently forecast political realignments — but they rarely occur. Devine said the rift Trump exposed may actually lead to one, though. His brand of politics clearly is pushing some Republicans away. At the same time, his message on some issues — trade in particular — has appeal that could pull in some Democrats.

“It’s more possible than it’s seemed in a while,” he said.

Movement Can’t Be Just About Trump
The last political realignment occurred gradually, beginning in the 1960s, when Barry Goldwater’s blowout loss in the 1964 election set the Republican Party on a course to become the conservative party. But is there a Reagan to take the baton from Trump the way the 40th president incorporated Goldwater’s philosophy?

“I’m not sure if [Trump] loses in November, not sure if it lasts in the way that Goldwater’s ideas lasted beyond his loss in ’64,” Shirley said.

Alan Tonelson, an economic policy analyst whose skeptical views of trade deals align with Trump’s, said he does not believe a Republican loss in November would kill Trump-style populism within the party.

“Although, clearly a win and/or a more-skilled campaign would help,” he said.

But Tonelson said the popularity of Trump’s “America First” platform is obvious. And not just among Republicans, he added.

“Clearly, it’s got appeal to many independents,” he said. “Clearly, it has appeal to a lot of Democrats.”

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Tonelson said the views Trump represents are widely held among rank-and-file Republican voters, and he added that the Establishment is “too smart to simply thumb its nose” at tens of millions of voters.

But, he said, win or lose, it will require more than Trump for his nationalist movement to reach full potential. He said pro-trade, pro-immigration Republicans historically have “outmanned and outgunned” populists on the conservative side of the debate.

That movement has to “institutionalize itself,” he said.

“It has to create a truly vibrant movement, and it needs resources, both financial and intellectual,” he said. “A President Trump is going to need all the help he can get.”

That means recruiting like-minded candidates to run for office, Tonelson said. But it also means launching think tanks and developing the intellectual infrastructure to go toe to toe with the globalists.

“The question is, will there be follow-through,” he said, adding wealthy Trump supporters could help even the resource mismatch. “Will they be willing to pitch in?”