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Editor’s Note: Nicole Hemmer is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency at Vanderbilt University.she is the author “The Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Reshaped American Politics in the 1990s” She co-hosts a history podcast “past present” When “This day in esoteric political history.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own.see more opinion on CNN.
CNN
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The chaotic start of the 118th Congress has revived a largely forgotten piece of long-gone history, from endless voting to elect Speaker of the House to brawling in the House. But it has also revived recent debates about the Republican Party: former President Donald Trump’s role in the party’s turbulent and rebellious turn.
New York Times journalist Peter Baker said on MSNBC that the Republicans who voted against candidate Kevin McCarthy were all ardent Trump supporters, calling him a “major disruptor.” “I’m following his strategy,” he said, drawing inspiration from the man he called. ”
Baker’s comments echo a common narrative of Trump exceptionalism: the idea that Trump represents a uniquely subversive force that has turned the Republican Party off its pre-2016 path. But Trump’s exceptionalism scarcely discredites the long history of subversive politics of the right, and too much discredits Trump for undermining commitments to sabotage and fiscal radicalism within the Republican Party.
With the House under Republican control and Trump’s 2024 presidential election underway, understanding right-wing politics requires a more nuanced understanding of Trump’s relationship with the Republican Party.
It’s easy to see why the narrative of Trump exceptionalism continues. Opinion polls that followed Trump’s rise showed that Republicans voted to show their support for Trump, whether it was renewed skepticism about free trade and international alliances or renewed support for Russia. demonstrated willingness to change their minds on the issue of The 2020 Republican Platform contained no policies and only endorsed Trump. And the party largely rallied on Trump’s position on election denial and rioting.
There is no denying that Trump has had a very powerful influence on the party. But he followed few Republican standards, including fiscal policy and Supreme Court nominations. And when he deviates from traditional Republican priorities, like when he endorsed a $2,000 stimulus package after the 2020 election, many Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, members did not follow his lead. There has been no collective reorientation when it comes to policies that have long been central to the party’s right-wing base.
All of this suggests that President Trump has, in a significant way, been a continuation of key dynamics within the Republican and Conservative movements, not a disruption of them. Especially true. Because the forces that sparked the factional uprising against the Republican leadership are the same forces that led to Trump’s election.
The populist conservative trend towards counter-establishment politics emerged during the Cold War, when the liberal establishment was the target. But the success of Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan meant that by the 1990s there was a sizeable conservative organization ripe for rebellion.
The rebellion began shortly after President Reagan resigned. Newt Gingrich, when he was part of the Republican leadership in the House, helped Republican George HW his President Bush launch the budget in 1990, but quickly rushed to the press to condemn it. bottom. When Gingrich became chairman in his 1995, he joined the Republican establishment and became an immediate target. The most conservative part of the radically conservative Congress, a group of self-proclaimed True Believers, regularly tried to sabotage and expel Gingrich. When the Tea Party caucuses were held in the 2010s, they did the same with Chairman John Boehner.
The Republican rebels turned against their leaders, partly because of the changing party composition and partly because of the changing media landscape. The Republican Party became sharply conservative in her 1990s. Conservative Republicans, outraged by the compromise politics of the George H.W. Bush era, began to advocate a tougher stance, demonizing moderate members of the party as “Republicans in name only.”
Over the past decade, many of the remaining moderate Republicans have retired, changed parties or shifted politics to the right. As the Communist Party became uniformly conservative, differences within the party became more about tactics than ideology. Compromise was forbidden. Novel means of occlusion became popular.
The shift to the far right has accelerated thanks to the growing power of the conservative media. Many on the right have followed suit as a result of the newly conservatism of the Republican Party and the strengthening of the conservative media system.
The right-wing media invested less in governance than ratings, and advanced maximalist positions. On radio talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, Republicans were whipped on-air for trying to work with Democrats. Lawmakers seeking national prestige or avoiding major challenges saw many advantages in being hardliners and disruptors.
By the time Trump came along, he wasn’t starting a movement, he was following a trend. An attack on the Republican establishment? The right wing has been doing it for decades. Fueling Fox News for being too liberal? Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum pulled off that trick in the 2012 primary.
Still, Trump has had a noticeable impact on the right. His candidacy stoked and displaced dissidents within the party that had been deteriorating and bubbling for decades. I spliced the two pieces together. (That’s why it was so strange to hear pundits refer to the anti-McCarthy campaign as extremists. By 2023, a sizeable majority of Republicans in the House will embrace extremism. )
At the same time, Trump has stepped up the incentives for chaos, action-oriented dissidentism, and self-bipartisan politics. This is a clear legacy of anti-McCarthy activism.
Last week’s battle between House Republicans had little to do with Trump. What it did do was shed light on the factors contributing to the party’s continued decline: weakness in the party’s founding, opportunities for selfish actors, and the potential for continued turmoil as the new Congress progresses. Very high. In other words, regardless of Trump’s own political destiny, the future of Republican rule will almost certainly be characterized by government dysfunction and further damage to the nation’s economic and political health.
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