The rocky ending to President Trump’s term, concluding with an unprecedented second impeachment vote on the charge of inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol, has cast a pall over populist Republicans who seek to rebuild the party in his image.
Two of those led the charge in Congress on objecting to the Electoral College tallies of a handful of contested battleground states Trump refused to concede, citing voter fraud and other voter fraud. One was Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who has said the future of conservatism is both populist and libertarian. The other was Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican whose populism, like Trump’s, constitutes a break with the more libertarian assumptions of the GOP Right.
Both of those senators find themselves squarely in the crosshairs of Republicans who would like to turn the page on the Trump era. “Supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life,” former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, a Republican who officiated Ronald Reagan’s funeral in 2004, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
An Ipsos/Axios poll found a party split between “Trump Republicans” and “traditional Republicans.” According to the results, 46% of Republicans strongly or somewhat approved of Hawley to 49% who strongly or somewhat disapproved. But GOP voters were similarly divided over consummate establishment insider Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with 42% somewhat or strongly approving to 54% who strongly or somewhat disapproved (only 10% strongly approved).
The poll found that 56% of Republicans were of the traditional variety, while 36% were more pro-Trump. Overall, 57% strongly or somewhat agreed with the idea of Trump as the 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
“I think there will be a backlash inside the Beltway and in the C-suite against Trump populism, but there wasn’t much patience for it in those places to begin with,” said Republican strategist John Feehery. “But outside the Beltway, there will be a backlash against that backlash. The problems and anxieties that face many Trump voters haven’t magically gone away just because Trump lost and is leaving the White House in such ignominious fashion.”
Under Trump, Republicans began to buck against consensuses in favor of liberalized immigration embraced by party leaders since George W. Bush and free trade that dated all the way back to Reagan. Some also questioned the length and wisdom of recent foreign wars and eschewed Paul Ryan-style entitlement reforms and instead advocated $2,000 direct stimulus payments during COVID-19. Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show became one of the most highly rated political talk programs discussing many of these themes.
“For Republicans, they have to focus on how to best respond to those anxieties,” Feehery added. “Ignoring them or hoping they go away is not much of a strategy.”
Still, many of the party’s priorities remained the same, even with Trump in the White House. The outgoing president touted tax cuts and deregulation as the keys to the economic boom and low unemployment that existed before the pandemic. Trump and congressional Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare, eventually slaying its individual mandate.
“It won’t affect the substantive work on the economic rethinking; American Compass’s plans haven’t changed,” said Oren Cass, who leads a think tank devoted to coming up with a new conservative policy agenda. “It could affect the timeline on which the right-of-center itself evolves. I think it’s still to be determined how these events, which are still ongoing, are processed and what dividing lines emerge and solidify.”
Cass predicted, “Some guardians of the pre-Trump status quo will redouble their efforts to define any alternative to the GOP’s outdated market fundamentalism as ‘populism,’ which they will equate with lunatics storming the Capitol, as if skepticism about supply-side tax cuts or enthusiasm for industrial policy are just steps down the slippery slope to insurrection.”
Although the House voted to impeach Trump for the second time, he is likely to leave office when his term expires on Wednesday ahead of any Senate trial.
