The Republican Party Is Dead. It’s the Trump Cult Now.

The president may well be a liability for Republicans, but the GOP belongs to him now, and no one can change that.

Written by a conservative…

newrepublic.com

Donald Trump is the past, present, and future of the Republican Party. And that is because the GOP is no longer a traditional political party designed to win elections so that it can enact a policy agenda. It is a personality cult built around grievance.

The people waiting in the wings to try to take Trump’s place—Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, or even the hapless Ted Cruz—believe that they can succeed by offering populist policies without Trump’s cruelty and contempt for the rest of America. They think that if they can only convince Republican voters that they really will take on Big Tech, then the party faithful will rally to their banner. True Trumpism has never been tried!

Four years from now, these pikers will discover the truth: that the cruelty and contempt are not just the essential ingredients of Trumpism but exactly what Republican voters hunger for. They don’t want deregulation, or a lower marginal tax rate, or even The Wall. What they want is the liberation to talk freely about the people they hate.