Party woes deeper than Trump

Don’t be distracted by

Donald Trump’s effort to complicate Merrick Garland’s life by announcing his presidential candidacy on Tuesday night. Yes, Trump is a big problem for the Republican Party, but he is also a symptom of deeper troubles facing the GOP and the conservative movement.

First, let’s dispense with the foolish suggestion that Trump’s formal entry into the race should slow decision-making on the former president’s legal fate.

If, say, a thief or a drug dealer had long been under investigation and claimed he could thwart an indictment by declaring as a presidential candidate nearly two years before an election, we’d laugh at his effrontery. Attorney General Garland and his Justice Department colleagues should decide what to do about Trump on the basis of the facts and the law — and let Trump howl into the wind.

Should an indictment of Trump lead a Republican-led House to go after one of the least-partisan attorneys general in history, this would prove what we already know: Too many Republicans put Trump and politics over the rule of law. And maybe, just maybe, there are members of the party (yes, I am thinking of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) who would take joy in how a prosecution of Trump could put the GOP out of its misery.

But the bedlam in the party goes well beyond a spiteful former president and his legal jeopardy. That’s obvious in the challenge McConnell (Ky.) faced for the Republican Senate leadership from Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), and in how short Rep. Kevin McCarthy

(R-Calif.) is of the support he will need to become speaker when the House votes in January. McConnell easily put Scott away on Wednesday, 37-10. But McCarthy, who will need a majority of the entire House, will be struggling with a GOP advantage so narrow, he’ll have to kowtow simultaneously to representatives of the party’s far right and to its half-dozen to a dozen relative moderates. Twisting himself into a pretzel might be insufficient.

Watching McConnell and

Scott face off was particularly delicious because each made points against the other that were true. Scott was quite right that Republicans did not run on any program this year. “We have to offer ideas,” Scott told a Heritage Action gathering after Election Day last week. “We have to be bold.”

Well, yes, but Scott’s ideas, such as raising taxes on lowerincome Americans and forcing Congress to reauthorize Social Security and Medicare every five years, were an albatross for the candidates he was trying to elect.

Both McConnell and Scott were pointing to the core GOP conundrum. If Republicans say what they would do with power, they will scare away a lot of voters because the party’s economic and programmatic aspirations are too right-wing.

The conservative, anti-government ideology that defines the GOP has not been broadly popular since the Great Recession. While Trump often mouths some of the Reagan-era bromides, he constantly signals (on trade especially, as well as his promises to protect Medicare and Social Security) that he doesn’t buy free market orthodoxy.

This allowed Trump to expand Republican working-class support not only among Whites but also among Latinos. Yes, racial and cultural backlash is central to Trump’s appeal. But finessing economic issues made it easier for Trump to make his sale with the White working class.

Those Trump gains are now in jeopardy. One of the petrifying things for Republicans about the 2022 results is how Democrats cut — and in some cases slashed — GOP margins across red counties, particularly in key swingstate contests: in Pennsylvania’s races for both governor and the U.S. Senate; in Michigan’s governor’s race; and in Arizona’s Senate race.

Trump has now become a Republican liability, as evidenced by the defeat of so many of his election-denying candidates. Important Republican institutional voices (the Wall Street Journal editorial page and National Review, for example) greeted Trump’s Mar-a-Lago announcement with horror. National Review’s simple, biting headline: “No.”

But conservative and GOP leaders must still reckon with the reasons Trump took over the movement and the party in the first place. Both became increasingly motivated by resentment over social and demographic change. At the same time, the party’s large working-class base no longer trusted board room Republicanism.

Many of the party’s leaders have decided they can’t win with Trump, and can’t win without his voters. This dilemma explains why they are tongue-tied on policy — and why it will be hard for them to avoid reverting to the attack politics McConnell says he laments.