Trump and the New Republicans

Once escaped, it is difficult to get the genie back in the bottle. Nevertheless, a Republican Party posited in these terms is extremely vulnerable. Why? Because it lacks what always used to define it: ideas and programs.

To have launched themselves into public life under the stewardship of Abraham Lincoln, as the Republicans did, is no small feat. Lincoln, having preserved the unity of the country, freed the slaves, given the greatest elegy to democracy in historical memory in his Gettysburg Address and laid the foundation for national reconciliation and the integration of America’s Black population, positioned himself as the greatest U.S. president.

Shortly after the dawn of the 20th century, the Republicans were to have another giant of U.S. democracy in the White House: Theodore Roosevelt. A stalwart in the fight against monopolies and unrestrained capitalism, he was to be the spokesperson and the figurehead of the progressive era. At the same time, he was the first president to project his country as a primary global power and was a forerunner for the environmental movement within it.

In more recent times, the Republican Party brought distinguished figures such as Dwight Eisenhower to power, followed by Richard Nixon a few years later. The former provided the nation with infrastructure, while the latter, despite the ignominy of Watergate, enacted one of the most articulate foreign policies that the country has ever seen. It would fall to another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, to install himself as an uncompromising iconoclast within the established international order and set the destruction of, rather than coexistence with, Soviet communism as his principal aim. What appeared at the time to be a risky gamble transformed into a shining example of success. To it, he would add the dismantling of the established economic order with the emphatic introduction of the market economy in partnership with Margaret Thatcher. Although a single presidential term did not afford him the time to consolidate a strategic project, his successor, George H.W. Bush, another Republican, laid the foundations of the international order following the end of the Cold War.

The common denominator of all the historical figures cited was the coherence of their policies and the strategic vision that motivated them. Even George W. Bush, who can readily be criticized for his arrogance and his unilateral foreign policy, demonstrated a clearly articulated vision in both. As much as one might have disagreed with the neoconservative premises, the solid conceptual basis for each could not be denied.

How did the situation change from this to a Republican Party not only opposed to ideas and ideologies but also science, knowledge, merit and even reality itself? A party that feeds on and gravitates around the most far-fetched conspiracy theories and wields the most extreme positions as if they were wholly acceptable. A party that rationalizes the rejection of legitimate elections and that has, through a representative cohort of its leadership, allowed an assault on democracy. A party whose new base is symbolized by the emblems brandished by those who stormed the Capitol last week: The Confederate flag, banners with the slogan “6MWE” (referring to how the 6 million Jewish deaths in the Holocaust were not enough), or the varied paraphernalia of QAnon (for whom Donald Trump is waging a secret war against a satanic cult of pedophiles who have infiltrated positions of power).

There are many reasons that would explain how things reached this stage. First, Republican pluto-populism. In other words, the presence of a group of plutocrats dedicated to nurturing populism within the party as a mechanism to control it, with the objective of implementing policies in line with their business interests. Second, the erosion of democratic principles within the Republican leadership. In the realization that the new racial and cultural configuration of the country is not in their favor, they have devoted themselves over a number of years to voter suppression or manipulation. Once established within a realpolitik that ran against the party’s principles, it has been easy for them to make the smooth transition from there toward more overt strategies to control power.

Third, the ability to live within closed information ecosystems. The rise of social networks and the radicalization of certain social media outlets has allowed the creation of a world turned inward on itself, a world that is impermeable to any contradictory sources of information and powered by myths and conspiracy theories. Fourth, the appearance of an unscrupulous demagogue who has combined the teachings of Joseph Goebbels, according to whom a lie sufficiently repeated became the truth, with the universal dominance of social networks and reality TV. This has enabled them to give form to an “alternative reality” that is little more than the absence of reality itself.

Once escaped, it is difficult to get the genie back in the bottle. Nevertheless, a Republican Party posited in these terms is extremely vulnerable. Why? Because it lacks what always used to define it: ideas and programs. Just as Georg W.F. Hegel used to say, nothing important in the world has ever been achieved without passion. Yet, he would add, a calculating passion. One that is drawn from reflection.