The Trump effect lingers on
Many Republicans might privately hope that Donald Trump will not be able to run for office again, but for now the grand old party is firmly in his maverick control and he remains a frontrunner for 2024.
DESPITE ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE past two years following his drubbing at the polls, Donald Trump remains the frontrunner in the presidential sweepstakes of 2024 with the Republican Party firmly in his control. In the mid-term elections scheduled in November, most of the Republican candidates running for the Upper and Lower Houses of Congress are vocal Trump supporters. The few Republican politicians who dared to oppose him are now in the political wilderness.
Liz Cheney and the handful of Republican congressional and Senate members who voted for the impeachment motion brought by the Democrats against Trump
for “incitement of insurrection” have either retired from politics or were defeated in the primaries held this year. Cheney is the vice chairperson of the congressional panel investigating the January 6 “insurrection”, an unprecedented event in the annals of US politics.
Given the current mood of the Republican Party faithfuls, anyone seen as remotely hostile to Trump has no future in the party for the foreseeable future. A recent poll revealed that more than 70 per cent of Republicans actually believe that the Democrats “stole” the last presidential election aided and abetted by the US’S powerful “deep state”. Most Republicans vying for a seat in Congress or the Senate or who are in the race for the posts of Governor and Secretary of State are running on the platform that the 2020 election was rigged against their candidate. Secretaries of State will play an important role in the administration of the 2024 election. Trump wanted the Secretaries of State in Georgia and Arkansas to annul Joe Biden’s victory in those States in 2020. Concerted efforts are already under way in many Republican-controlled States to deny racial minorities the vote.
The multiple painstaking recounts of the vote in the key swing States where Trump claimed the elections were rigged proved that Biden won in a fair and transparent election. After all, he got over seven million votes more than Trump. Writing in The Atlantic, Sarah Longwell, who works for an organisation named “Republicans for the Rule of Law”, said that diehard Trump supporters continued to be firm in their belief that “something nefarious” happened in the 2020 election. Trump, Longwell wrote, has successfully convinced them to disbelieve the results. Months before the election, Trump started with his claims that it was going to be rigged, focussing on the large number of mail-in ballots that were decisive in deciding his electoral fate.
RERUN OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Trump has urged his supporters to make the mid-term elections a rerun of the presidential election and thus prove to his base that he was cheated in his bid for a second term. In the 2016 election too, Trump alleged voter fraud despite the fact that he won. He was angry because his rival Hillary Clinton got over three million votes more than he did. It was only because of the quirks inherent in American democracy that Trump was able to triumph in that election. The votes in the Electoral College in a few small States where he narrowly won helped him cross the final hurdle.
The main campaign platform of the Republican Party in most States is that Biden is not a “legitimate” President. In many of his recent speeches, Trump has further escalated his rhetoric and is demanding that he be reinstated as President or that fresh presidential elections be held. One of the reasons he gave for making his latest demand is based on the spurious claim that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) advised Facebook to block stories relating to Hunter Biden, the current President’s son, during the 2020 campaign. The Republicans have alleged that Hunter Biden, with the help of his father, made a lot of money in business deals in Ukraine and China during the two terms of the Barack Obama administration.
As of now, the Republican Party is putty in the hands of Trump. He is the lord and master of all he surveys. He brooks no dissent and has been critical of politicians such
as Florida Governor Ron Desantis, who is not hiding his ambition to run for President on the Republican ticket in the next election. Recently, Trump launched a broadside against Mitch Mcconnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. His crime, in the eyes of the former President, was to vote with the Democrats to pass a Bill that helped prevent the stoppage of federal government spending until the end of the year. Trump said that Mcconnell must have voted for the legislation because “he hates Donald J. Trump” and has a “death wish”. To add insult to injury, Trump described Mcconnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who served as Transportation Secretary in his administration, as the “China-loving Coco Chow”. Not a single Republican Senator, including moderate ones such as Mitt Romney, criticised the former President’s “death wish” statement.
FBI RAID ON MAR-A-LAGO
Many Republicans, including Desantis, are no doubt privately hoping that Trump will not be able to run again. They fear that the many scandals dogging him could drag down the party in a presidential election. The multipronged investigation the Biden administration launched into the January 6 insurrection, which many in the US have described as a coup attempt, finally seems to
be making substantial progress. Simultaneously, there have been probes into the murky state of Trump’s financial affairs and various acts of skulduggery, including the alleged unauthorised removal of official documents, some of them marked as top secret, from the White House. The FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on the former President’s residence in Mar-a-lago in Florida to seize the documents. The raid on his property, according to many US political commentators, was the most significant action that the government had taken so far against Trump. According to reports in the US media, the documents seized during the raid relate to sensitive issues such as nuclear strategy, including details about both US capabilities and those of its enemies, and transcripts of illegally intercepted phone calls of foreign leaders, including NATO allies such as French President Emmanuel Macron.
According to reports, US Attorney General Merrick Garland believes that the former President may be guilty of violating the country’s Espionage Act. This draconian Act, framed after the 1917 Russian Revolution, is only invoked in exceptional circumstances. In the1950s, it was invoked against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were accused of passing on nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, the Act was used against anti-war activists
such as Daniel Ellsberg. More recently, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have come under its scanner.
NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL’S LAWSUIT
The Biden administration seems to have prioritised the “documents” case over that of the January 6 investigations. If both investigations fail, then there is the question of the Trump business empire cooking its books and cheating the US Internal Revenue Service. New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against Trump and three of his children aims to recover $250 million from his company and essentially bankrupt his business empire. And to add to the former President’s cup of woes, civil suits are expected from people who were affected by the violence his supporters unleashed on January 6 on Capitol Hill.
Trump has not yet given the impression that he is rattled by the new developments. He continues to hold his Make America Great Again (MAGA) rallies to amplify his message that the election was stolen. He keeps on repeating that America became a “third world” nation as soon as he left office and that the Ukraine conflict would not have taken place if he was still in the White House. The “blue-collar white vote” that used to generally go to the Democrats until the time of the Barack Obama presidency is now firmly in Trump’s corner.
The US Supreme Court, which turned decisively conservative during the Trump presidency, is helping his cause and rallying his base by giving favourable judgments on emotive issues championed by the right wing. Trump was successful in appointing three very conservative judges during his term in office. They played a big role in overturning the historic Roe vs Wade judgment that had legalised abortion. That decision has galvanised the Democrats and women voters all over the country but may not be enough to turn the tide for the Democrats. Mid-term elections have traditionally been bad for the ruling party during its first term in office.
The latest opinion polls show that the Republicans are on their way to retake Congress. The current forecast is that the Democrats could still narrowly retain the Senate. According to a Gallup poll survey released in the second week of October, 56 per cent of Americans think that Biden is doing a bad job and 67 per cent think that the economy is getting worse. The draconian sanctions Biden imposed on Russia after the conflict in Ukraine started has boomeranged on the West and substantially added to inflationary pressures in the US and in Europe. The recent decision by Opec+russia to cut oil production resulted in gasoline prices rising yet again in the US.
The unprecedented rise in inflation and cost of living for ordinary Americans in the last two years are the two important factors helping the Republicans maintain their high polling numbers.
The continuing inflow of undocumented workers across the border with Mexico has given Republicans more ammunition. In a recent political gimmick, Desantis financed the despatch of two plane loads of undocumented migrants from Republican-controlled Texas to Massachusetts, which is a “blue” State.
It was Trump’s openly hostile stand on migration, minorities, and Islam that initially gave his presidential campaign a boost in 2016. Now his acolytes do not think twice before making speeches laying all the blame of the US’ decline on the growing presence in the country of people of colour and of different religions.
‘THE MAGA REPUBLICANS’
In a landmark speech Biden made in the battleground State of Philadelphia on September 1, he characterised the Trump-led Republican Party as a semi-fascist movement. “Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” Biden said, are promoting “an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic”. He said that Trump and his followers “do not respect the Constitution” and “do not respect the will of the people”. The President warned that Trump was using the insurrection attempt as “a preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections”. While campaigning for the mid-term elections, Biden told Americans “to choose to be a nation of hope, unity and optimism—or a nation of fear, division, and darkness”.
The differences between the two parties are mainly in relation to domestic politics. On foreign policy, there is consensus, as both parties have deep connections with Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. The Biden administration has continued with the Trump administration’s policies on all major international issues. Biden had promised to restore the Iran nuclear deal as soon as he took over, but his administration wants the Iranian government to give additional commitments over and above those contained in the original deal Obama signed. Biden as Vice President was a vocal supporter of the nuclear deal. Similarly, on Cuba, Biden has continued with the Trump administration’s punitive policies. Obama had made a historical visit to Cuba and lifted many of the draconian sanctions the US had imposed since the 1960s.
The Republicans already control the governorship of 28 of the country’s 50 States and have the majority in 30 State legislatures. Half of the 100 seats in the US Senate are filled by Republicans who are at the moment subservient to Trump’s political whims. The majority in the US Supreme Court owes its appointments to the Republican Party. The party is now in a position to manipulate the future course of US politics. m
On foreign policy, there is consensus, as both parties have deep connections with Wall Street and the military-industrial complex.