CPAC: Is there a GOP without Trumpism?
“Do you miss me yet?” asked Donald Trump, emerging from the seclusion of Mar-a-Lago to keynote last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference. The crowd roared in a demonstration of its “devotion,” said Elaina Plott in The New York Times. At the four-day event, the mood was “defiantly pro-Trump,” with ubiquitous MAGA hats and fans posing for photos with a 6-foot golden statue of Trump holding a magic wand—recalling for many critics the Old Testament’s ill-fated golden calf. Lest any doubt remain, CPAC attendees told reporters their “allegiance was to the former president far more than to the Republican Party.” The conservative movement used to be defined by ideas, but it’s now devolved into “reverence” for “one man.”
Trump’s speech was a tired repeat of his usual “own the libs” grievances, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post, with an emphasis on the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. But his heart didn’t seem in his hint that “I may even decide to run again” in 2024. He grew passionate only in demanding vengeance on the 17 GOP lawmakers who voted to remove him from office, whom he took the time to list by name. “Get rid of them all,” he snarled. All of which puts Republicans in a bind. “Party leaders in their hearts know that they can’t win with Trump and Trumpism,” especially after the Jan. 6 insurrection. But as CPAC made clear, “they can’t live without him and his followers.”
Trump shouldn’t run again, said Eddie Scarry in Washington Examiner.com, but he is still “crucial to the party’s future.” He has “revolutionized” the conservative movement by championing an “America First, working-class” agenda, and creating “a blueprint for future Republicans to win national office.” At CPAC, Trump signaled his willingness to be “kingmaker rather than king,” said Miranda Devine in the New York Post, disavowing rumors that he planned to start a third party. With exciting young conservatives like Govs. Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem waiting to pick up Trump’s populist torch of personal liberty, economic nationalism, and national pride, this bodes well for the GOP’s future.
As a Republican, I was heartened to hear Trump “shooting down the idea of a third party,” said Scott Jennings in CNN.com. Splitting our voter base would condemn the GOP to perpetual defeat. But we’re also not going to win if our voter base “gets any smaller”; in both 2016 and 2020, Trump got a smaller percentage of the popular vote than Mitt Romney did in 2012. Trumpism, as he and his cult made clear at CPAC, is pure “revanchism,” said Jonathan Last in TheBulwark.com. It consists of little more than a white, largely male minority’s grievance-driven hunger to “return to a time when they held power.” These angry populists have zero interest in trying to woo back the millions of disgusted moderates and suburban women who emphatically rejected Trump in 2020.
Republicans may run a Trumpist in 2024, said Osita Nwavenu in NewRepublic.com, but not Trump himself. He’ll be 78 by then, if he hasn’t already been yanked from the stage by Father Time, or the circling prosecutors in New York, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. Unlike his golden effigy—made in Mexico, it turns out, from a fiberglass shell coated in gold veneer—“the man isn’t immortal.” With his unique combination of shameless bombast and theatrical victimhood, Trump will “be a tough act to follow.” But sooner or later, some Republican “will have to follow him.”