As the midterm elections approach, and Republicans on Capitol Hill grow weary of answering for an unpopular policy coming out of the White House — in this case, the policy of immediately prosecuting illegal border crossings, resulting in children being separated from their families — I am often asked: Isn’t the party divided? When will Republican leaders say “enough” to President Trump?
This question illuminates the gap between (a) Republican voters and (b) the Republicans who inhabit Washington and professional politics. The Republican Party outside of D.C. — the voters themselves — is largely united behind Trump. In focus groups I conduct across the country, even Republican voters who readily acknowledge Trump was not their first or even tenth choice in the Republican primary in 2017 will nonetheless say they are glad he is picking fights, breaking things, and draining the swamp. Last week, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans tied its record high of 90 percent.
But at least within Washington, the story is quite different. When I am asked about the divisions within the party today, I have started to describe a taxonomy of Republican leaders with four different categories. Without concrete survey data on a sample of “Republican swamp dwellers,” I’ve assembled these categories from personal observation and conversations with those across the spectrum.
The first category of D.C. Republican is the Trump enthusiast. The true believer, the die hard. This is the type of person who was aboard the Trump Train from the get-go, someone for whom the Republican Party of Donald Trump is the party they’ve always hoped for. Tough on immigration and trade, never enamored of Bush-era foreign policy, thrilled to have overthrown the old guard, this is the type of individual for whom a Trump administration has made Washington their oyster.
The second category of D.C. Republican is the establishmentarian. Someone who was perfectly comfortable under the “old ways” but has adapted quickly to survive in their new, harsher environs. They play for Team GOP and Trump is their quarterback, so they’re happy to run his plays as long as they keep winning games. Trump was not toward the top of their list of possible choices for a nominee in 2016, but once he was picked, he was the guy and it was time to fall in line. A significant portion of Capitol Hill and the Republican Party apparatus fits into this category. Do they love the tweeting? Not really. Do they care enough to object? Absolutely not, not so long as regulations are being reformed and taxes are being cut.
The third category is the internal opposition. As the continuing echo of the “Never Trump” movement, they view Trump as consistently wrong and categorically dangerous. They have found common cause with Democrats in the #Resistance, holding semi-secret meetings to discuss how to combat what they view as a hostile parasite that has found in the GOP a too-willing host. There is very little that they find praiseworthy about the current moment, and there have even been moments where some, like former presidential candidate Evan McMullin, have actively called for the defeat of mainstream Republicans at the ballot box as a way of teaching the party a lesson.
Each of the three groups above has some form of infrastructure, organization, or common cause. They have legal entities which are vehicles for fundraising or promoting a message. For the Trump enthusiasts, the #MAGA message is clear and there is a campaign apparatus being run by Trump’s 2016 digital guru Brad Parscale. For the Trump-era establishmentarians, the common cause is putting points on the board for the red jerseys, and there are longstanding institutions from the Republican National Committee to Conservative Political Action Conference to major think tanks who adjust and adapt their message to whomever is winning at the moment. And for the Trump opposition, there too is a cause, a message, and infrastructure that can purchase ads on Fox to spread that message, even if their views are not widely held by the broader Republican electorate.
But there is a fourth group. For lack of a better name at the moment, I will shamelessly steal the name of the excellent podcast hosted by columnist Jonah Goldberg: “the Remnant.” Goldberg in his introductory episode notes that his show will be neither pro- nor anti-Trump, but rather something for those who feel left behind by the other factions, who live in a constant state of feeling that everyone else around them seems to have gone crazy.
The Remnant is the least organized or easy to describe of the four types of Republican in Washington today. The Remnant does not have meetings. It does not have an agenda or a manifesto or a super PAC or a c(3). When they feel the president has done something good, they will praise him. When they feel he has erred, they will criticize him.
The trouble for the Remnant is that taking things issue by issue, day by day, is a perfectly admirable thing to do from an intellectual perspective but is nearly impossible to organize around politically. But for a thriving ideological movement — not a political movement, which prizes choosing sides — perhaps the Remnant is the most interesting group of them all.
After all, there is something to be said for being defined not by support for or opposition to a man, but rather to be defined by ideas.
