Trumpism’s Grip on the United States

The last bastion of party resistance centers around the Senate Republicans who voted for Biden’s infrastructure bill, the passing of which was a major feat in the current political climate. It is also thanks to them that the United States did not default on its debt in December. But many of those senators are on their way out, with some having already announced their retirement - Richard Shelby (Alabama), Roy Blunt (Missouri), Richard Burr (North Carolina), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania). Apart from Pennsylvania, Trump won all of these states, and we can therefore expect their replacement by more Trumpist figures. It should also be noted, in order to avoid any false equivalence with the Democrats, that during the Trump presidency, there was always a majority of Democrats that voted to raise the debt ceiling as well as for the Covid-19 relief and stimulus packages. 

Intellectuals and radical conservative organizations preparing for the future

Trump has no political agenda to speak of and is seemingly solely driven by his thirst for revenge against those who failed to support his efforts to delegitimize the November 2020 election. But many intellectuals, journalists, activists, and ambitious young people, across a multitude of both traditional and online outlets, are fueling the culture war that has come to define Trumpism. They seek to imbue the next Republican administration with an offensive agenda, emphasizing the impetus that Trumpism has provided for the resuscitation of a nationalist, radical, post-liberal, nihilistic conservatism. The MAGA alt-right nationalist constellation does not agree on everything - far from it - but it is full of energy and willingness to join forces against the common "enemy:" the Biden administration and the Democratic Congress. It has many foot-soldiers, as the Trump Twitter-presidency has boosted an ascendant and radical far-right wing. They are a diverse group he lifted out of the obscure margins and forums of the web through retweets in broad daylight, using the bully-pulpit to both expand their audience and legitimize their positions. Algorithms and the acceleration of media rhythms fueled the chaos, and the ever-present "controversy of the day" completed the job. Trump’s ban from the major social networks came too late to curb this normalization of extremism and reinforced the Republican narrative that labeled the platforms as pro-Democrat.

Trump has allowed the legitimization and even mainstreaming of these forces, all of which can be described as far-right, but which stem from many factions, including religious traditionalists, evangelicals and fundamentalist Catholics, neo-reactionaries, conspiracy theorists, militia members, right-wing anarchists, instinctive libertarians and even monarchists. They are a generation who have fed on the information wars of Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, as well as new figures that exploded under Trump, such as Dan Bongino. Bongino’s Facebook page has 8.5 million viewers, more than the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal combined. While the Republican Party since Nixon has sought to attract these groups - referring to them as the "silent majority" or, perhaps more prosaically, "our crazies" - Trump has made them the base of the party. 

Some of these groups, such as the Claremont Institute and Yoram Hazony’s National Conservatism movement, intend to capture this energy and orient the right through a strategy of alliances with a clear political agenda, despite the obvious contradictions between individual organizations. The Claremont Institute has been the "official" ideological purveyor of Trumpism since Michael Anton’s essay on the "Flight 93 Election"; it was also responsible for John Eastman’s memo on certifying the election and theorizing Pence’s expected role on January 6 - specifically, blocking the confirmation of Biden’s election. The Institute’s director, Ryan Williams, describes his think tank’s as on a mission to "save Western civilization." In a recent interview, he spoke of a new American civil war that should be avoided "almost at all costs." Claremont’s publications have become increasingly radical and apocalyptic: in a March 2020 article in Claremont’s "The American Mind" blog, Glenn Elmers wrote that more than half of the people living in the United States "are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term." In the August 2021 Claremont Review of Books, Angelo Codevilla described a country demolished by a "half-century of Progressive rule’s abuse." Among its activities, the Claremont Institute trains both current and future Trumpist cadres through its fellowships, which have included such alumni as Jack Posobiec and a congressional aide to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene is one of the most virulent "Trump babies" elected to Congress in 2020, a fan of QAnon whose first attempt at legislation after her election was attempting to launch impeachment proceedings against Biden in January 2021. 

A New Right and a New Republican Party

Trump’s reaction to his 2020 defeat, including the "Stop The Steal" movement that led up to the assault on the Capitol, has profoundly transformed the Republican Party, causing it to secede from reality. The persistence and amplification of the 2020 election "Big Lie," its place at the heart of upcoming primary campaigns and the rhetoric emanating from the Republican Party as a whole are not just worrisome for American democracy, they also illustrate the failure of Biden’s promise to "restore America’s soul."

The upcoming midterms could bring a larger radical right-wing "squad" to Congress with a simple and brutal political agenda: multiply impeachment proceedings against the Biden administration and purge the remaining Republican "traitors." Their prospects are good for a number of reasons. These include ongoing redistricting processes that are more favorable to Republicans, as well as a primary system that tends to favor the most extreme candidates. They are also helped by the current economic and pandemic situations, which are Biden’s foremost priorities. The situation can evolve of course, but, for the moment, all indicators point towards a clear Republican victory in the House. The situation is less clear in the Senate, where the map somewhat favors the Democrats, and state-level elections may disadvantage some of the more extreme Trumpist candidates; all this remains to be seen, however, as even relatively recent precedents (such as the 2010 midterms) may have lost their predictive value in this new political era. For now, though, it is likely that the 2022 midterms will further consolidate the hold of Trumpism on American political institutions. And immediately after the midterms, the 2024 Presidential campaign will start, launching a new spiral of Trumpist one-upmanship among Republicans, designed either to please Trump - if he decides to run again - or to seduce his voters if he chooses not to.

Copyright: AFP / Brendan Smialowski