Julia FlanaganOn Wednesday evening this week, the US House of Representatives drew its business to an expedited close and suspended its sitting for the following day after law enforcement warned they had become aware of a threat to the Capitol Building, from militia groups possibly planning a repeat of the insurrectionist riot of January 6th.
The source of the threat lay in an obscure conspiracy theory, embraced by fringe groups like QAnon and others, that clings to the belief that former President Donald Trump was about to be re-inaugurated on Thursday.
NBC News reported that “Many QAnon adherents [have] adopted Thursday as the next day they believe Democrats will be arrested en masse or the day that Trump will be re-inaugurated as president. The “sovereign citizen” movement, a 50-year-old conspiracy movement composed largely of radical tax protesters, believes there has not been a legitimate president since Ulysses S. Grant, who was inaugurated March 4, 1869.”
Whether they believe such illegitimacy extends to Trump’s 2016 election victory is not clear.
The warning of possible violence and the House response came, ironically, as Congress was hearing evidence from military leaders about January’s storming of the capitol, and the fact that deployment of the National Guard to protect the nation’s lawmakers was devastatingly slow, for exact reasons we are still to learn. The deadly events of that day have been compared to a “war zone” and heightened fears of a repeat led to troops remaining in the nation’s capital.
In the end, those fears came to nothing, as many conspiracies tend to. But the notion that the legitimate business of government depends on the whim of those who would threaten it must surely be unsustainable; even as the institutions adjust to a renewed spectre of political violence.
That America is ideologically divided has been no secret for the past four years and beyond. That it is now living with such a threat, regardless of how its politics might actually function, is because one party is committed to governing while the other appears mired in a philosophy of grievance that has split its ranks, provided cover for extremism and made its strategic next steps highly unpredictable.
Republicans who imagine themselves following Trump into the White House have decided that the best way to do that is to mimic him, in an attempt to harness the anger of his supporters, rather than attempt to take the party in a more serious, primarily policy-driven direction.
Even former vice-president Mike Pence, himself an actual target of the rioters two months ago, stubbornly refuses to distance himself from his former boss. Exactly why remains uncertain.
The Cult of Personality Action Conference
If we learned one thing from last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), it’s probably, as commentator Matthew Dowd said, that if there was a “civil war” within the Republican Party, it’s already over and the Confederacy won.
If you were looking for clues about the future direction of the party in the post-Trump years, the appearance of a life-sized golden statue of the most recent former president – wearing his customary suit jacket and red tie, paired with American flag shorts – was probably a good place to start.
CPAC – organized by the right-wing lobby group the American Conservative Union – has been a highlight in the Republican political calendar for almost half a century. In years past, attendance has included all ideological factions, from libertarians and social conservatives to members of the party’s more hawkish foreign policy wing.
But the unabashed adoration of Donald Trump this year in Orlando, Florida made one thing very clear – CPAC, and by extension most of the GOP, is nothing less than a personality cult. The values and ideas that have traditionally defined the conservative movement have now been almost entirely replaced with allegiance to one man.
That shift was strikingly clear in the remarks of the politicians looking ahead to 2024 and a presidential primary campaign with or without Trump.
Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri – fresh from “taking a stand” by contesting the November election results – called for a “new nationalism” that included breaking up technology companies, tightening borders and standing up to China.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas – recently returned from his brief holiday to Cancun during his state’s weather-related energy crisis – got an enthusiastic reception for a speech focused on the threat to individual freedoms as a result of the government-enforced Covid lockdowns. But he also assured the crowd that his support was still strong for his once political nemesis.
“Let me tell you right now,” he said, “Donald J Trump ain’t going anywhere.”
While Hawley and Cruz were the men of the moment following their heightened profile as a result of January 6th, the Conference’s annual Straw Poll of future presidential preferences hardly proved encouraging for either of them. Trump, naturally, came out on top, followed by Florida Gov Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov Kristi Noem and former South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley. But while 95% of those who responded wanted to see Trump’s America First agenda continue, only 68% said he should run again.
Haley and Pence were notable absentees from the speaker roster, while the longest-serving Republican Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, was a no-show after his recent public clash with Trump, who had called him a “dour, sullen unsmiling political hack”.
There were, however, crowd-pleasing appearances from Donald Trump Jr and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle – eager to hold onto their 15 minutes of MAGA fame – with a speech entitled “Reigniting the American Dream,” Guilfoyle telling the crowd that Trump would achieve “more from his desk in Mar-a-Lago than Biden and Kamala will in the next four years.”
Trump’s speech itself did not disappoint the faithful, with his first public appearance since leaving office offering a trip down MAGA memory lane akin to watching an aging band play their greatest hits.
“Do you miss me yet?” he asked the crowd after emerging onto the podium to the sounds of Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless The USA.’ while embracing the American flag.
“I stand before you today to declare that the incredible journey we began together is far from over.”
Far from over, too, are many of the falsehoods that defined the final year of the Trump presidency – in particular his obsession with his election loss.
Using his speech to repeat the “big lie” that he actually won in November – despite Biden’s victory by 306 to 232 electoral votes – Trump teased a White House run in four years: “I may even decide to beat them for a third time,” the one-term former President remarked, knowing well that such an eventuality may be out of his own hands.
Trump has also remained defiant and unrepentant since the January 6 insurrection that led to his second impeachment. From the oddly-shaped stage on Sunday, he called out by name each of the Republican lawmakers who had voted to impeach him, ending with Rep Liz Cheney, who he accused of being a warmonger.
“Get rid of them all,” he growled.
Trump did confirm that he would not be starting a third party – clearly not wanting to put his own dollars on the line to do so, but happy to milk the GOP faithful for all he can – instead he pledged to unseat his critics within the party.
“I will be actively working to elect strong, tough, and smart Republican leaders,” he said.
He also used his return to the limelight to lash out at his successor, Joe Biden – surprisingly the only speaker to mention the new president – for his recent executive orders on immigration, accusing him of taking credit for the Trump administration’s work on vaccines and demanding that he reopen schools.
But the buzzword obsession with “cancel culture” was every speaker’s applause line of the weekend – the Conference was even titled “America Uncanceled” – proving that for at least a significant section of the base, knee-jerk cultural appeals are more effective fundraising tools than reasoned policy stances.
Where does the GOP go next?
The remaining anti-Trump Congressional Republicans, those who voted to impeach him or may have been critical of him in the past, can expect blowback from their local parties, which remain largely in thrall to the twice-impeached resort owner they consider a president-in-exile.
While there is no denying the enthusiasm of the grassroots Republican base for the former president, it is difficult to see how that might translate into a winning national agenda for next year’s midterm elections, particularly if Biden – whose personal approval rating is consistently higher than Trump’s ever was – can preside over a decline in the Coronavirus and an uptick in the economy.
Not only did Republicans lose the White House in November, but they also lost their Senate majority with the Georgia run-offs in January. Also in the minority in the House of Representatives, they now have to watch as the new administration rolls back much of Trump’s legacy, including tax cuts, and actions on regulations and energy. While cultural issues may play well with their base, to win nationally the post-Trump Republican Party will need a practical policy agenda and not raw, pointless obstructionism or recycling the grievances of the past.
The party’s success in future elections is dependent on traditional and populist conservatives aligning and uniting against the Democrats. But the question for the months ahead is if that is possible, which faction might lead that coalition? Right now the Trumpists appear in the ascendant, but the challenge for 2024 GOP candidates will be to find a way to embrace Trump’s America First agenda, while detaching themselves from the divisiveness and the noise of the man himself.
Writing at The Conversation, academics Morgan Marietta and David Barker make the case that “Polished populism – Trump’s policies without his personality – may be the future of the GOP’s identity.”
But all might not yet be lost electorally for Republicans, since 2021 will be the year of redistricting – the once-a-decade process of redrawing electoral maps to determine which party controls Congress. Though Democrats hold power in Washington, albeit tenuously, Republicans have the redistricting advantage heading into 2021 and are ready to bring about changes in states where they hold considerable control.
The US Supreme Court heard arguments this week in a major voting rights case that could give state legislatures a green light to change electoral laws, making it more difficult for some voters to cast a ballot: something that will likely benefit Republicans further down the line.
Meanwhile, House Democrats passed HR-1, their signature voting rights reform bill known as the For The People Act, a measure generally popular with the public but which will still face a tough ride through the Senate.
This weekend is the 56th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday clashes on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, which led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, currently at issue in the aforementioned Supreme Court case.
It will be the first anniversary without Civil Rights icon Rep John Lewis, who died last year. The fight against voter suppression and for civil rights is just as important today, and will be especially so the next time America goes to the polls.
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See Also:
From The Big Lie To A Great Undoing
