The Republican Party has set itself up for decades of wandering in the wilderness with its willingness to embrace Donald Trump — at the cost of the party’s identity, a New York Times columnist wrote Wednesday.
Jamelle Bouie argued the GOP has rushed to worship at the feet of Trump who, he wrote, has no interest in the party or its future.
And, when the 78-year-old Trump eventually disappears from the scene, it will leave the organization with a significant identity crisis.
“The Republican Party could wither and die, and Donald Trump would not care, provided it did not disrupt his ability to enrich himself and his family,” wrote Bouie.
“ … The party is little more than a patronage network centered on the personalist rule of an American caudillo and his billionaire allies, whose money can be deployed to circumvent party structures as much as bolster them.
“That Elon Musk could decide to run the Republican campaign apparatus and then subsequently make himself Trump’s unofficial co-president is evidence enough of the problem.”
Bouie wrote that Trump’s recent choice of Cabinet members demonstrates his relationship to his party.
The choices of Dr. Mehmet Oz, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth show clearly where the president-elect’s priorities lie, he argued.
“Trump is not picking from within the broad universe of the Republican Party; he has no interest in most of the politicians, policy entrepreneurs and experienced bureaucrats who make up most Republican administrations. He is interested, more or less, in people he sees on TV,” Bouie wrote.
“What he wants, as is clear to most observers, are deputies and subordinates who will show a special and specific loyalty to him, above and beyond everything else. Put a little differently: Trump is less concerned here with the health of the Republican Party, less concerned with building out the next generation of Republican leaders, than he is with serving his narrowest interests.”
And the party’s overall fealty to the man, seemingly at the expense of its traditional principles, will leave it floundering when he’s gone, the writer added.
It’s “a party that moves through American politics in the form of a ‘shambolic, lumbering and decidedly dangerous mess’ whose incapacity is ‘not just the absence of a common public purpose but, more ominously, the inability to control dangerous tendencies located ever more centrally inside the party,’” he wrote.
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“... In the absence of Trump, would the Republican Party look like an entity that could build or mobilize anything like a working electoral majority? Even now, in this world, it is clear that the president-elect’s appeal is distinct from that of his party; Republicans lost four Senate races in states that he won, and the party’s House majority teeters on a knife’s edge.
“ All of this is made worse by Trump’s indifference to party building, as well as his demands for loyalty. What is good for him — paying his legal bills, for example — may not be good for the ability of the party to succeed and win.
“The weakness of the institutional Republican Party, the fragility of the Republican majorities and the volatility of Trump himself are a recipe for political instability and chaos. It all serves as a reminder that whenever Trump does leave the scene, he will probably leave behind a Republican Party that will struggle to find an identity outside his reach and influence.”