In February, I wrote about the Democrats’ worst-case scenario: unpopular nominee Hillary Clinton failing to keep the party in control of the White House, while Republicans maintained their fierce grip on Congress and state governments across the country. Though Hillary remains broadly unpopular, the “Disaster” likely won’t arrive. Instead, all indications are that Donald Trump’s inability to run a serious campaign, combined with utterly toxic history with women (and even more toxic present with minorities) will assure the Democrats four more years of control of the Executive Branch.
So now it’s Republicans’ turn in the box. Their near-term is much less catastrophic electorally – even if the bottom falls out on Trump, they’ll still dominate state legislatures and governorships, they’re a 50-50 bet to keep the Senate, and they will almost certainly maintain control of the House – but there is major trouble on the horizon. If the GOP cannot successfully manage the fallout from Trump’s likely loss, it could mean an intraparty civil war that would upend its current coalition and create a splintering effect that could reorient the two-party balance of power.
Trump is already laying the groundwork for this battle. In the days following the release of the tape of his highly controversial “locker room talk” with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, several prominent Republicans responded by revoking their endorsements of the party’s nominee. House Speaker Paul Ryan essentially endorsed this effort, telling his caucus that he would no longer actively support Trump and they were free to do as their districts’ interests required.
Trump promptly did what he does best: he went to war. He lit into Ryan as a “weak and ineffective leader” and said he no longer wants the Speaker’s support. He called out establishment Republicans for their “disloyalty.” He made fun of John McCain, again.
The Access Hollywood tape was bad for Trump, of course, in that it extended his deficit from three or four points nationally to seven or eight. But that’s just a measure of the size of a loss he was likely to face anyway, not a change in his fortunes. In a way, the fallout from tape gave Trump the very thing he needed most – an excuse, and an easy boogeyman at whom to direct the anger of his supporters.
That anger is falling first and foremost on Ryan. At a rally in Ryan’s home state in Wisconsin over the weekend, Trump supporters began a loud and prolonged chant of “Paul Ryan sucks.” A YouGov poll taken after Ryan distanced himself from Trump found that the Speaker’s favorability among Republicans tanked as a result. His net favorability among GOP voters went from +5 to -23, and from +8 to -36 among Trump voters. The poll found Ryan with a higher unfavorability rating among Trump voters (64%) even than among Clinton voters (61%).
Paul Ryan is, in many ways, a natural foil for Trump. Ryan wants desperately to be taken seriously for his intellectual approach, and has tailored his entire career to being regarded as the ultimate conservative policy wonk. He’s also the definition of a career politician, a man in his mid-40s who has already served nearly 20 years in the House. He cares deeply about policy and philosophy, and wants nothing to do with the political rock fights to which Trump is so uniquely suited.
There has been much ink spilled contemplating “Trumpism” and what it means from a policy perspective going forward. But that is the ultimate in missing the forest for the trees. Trump’s rise was never based on his policy positions, few (if any) of which he articulated in any sort of clear way. He doesn’t care about policy. His appeal is entirely emotional. He is an angry man for an angry electorate. Trump’s candidacy is and was a giant middle finger to a class of political and social elites, a visceral rage against the machine. Nothing more, nothing less.
What Trump made clear in winning the Republican nomination contest is that the much-vaunted “conservative movement” is largely a myth. A large swath of Republican voters care little about the philosophical underpinnings of the free market and limited government. Sure, they want lower taxes, because they don’t like giving their money away and don’t trust the government to use it well. But what they really want more than anything is to kick the shit out of the smooth-talking politicians and eggheads who look down on them. That was why voters gleefully cheered along as Trump demolished “Low Energy” Jeb Bush and “Little” Marco Rubio and even “Lyin’” Ted Cruz. All of those candidates checked the right boxes on orthodox Republican policy, but they also spoke and behaved like Washingtonians. When Trump stuck it to them, he was channeling the anger that millions of people feel at a system and a class of people they do not think work for their interests.
That anger isn’t going to go away on November 9th. If anything, it’s likely to amplify. Hillary Clinton, the living embodiment of Republican base vitriol for 30 years, will occupy the White House, and the finger-pointing will commence. Establishment Republicans will likely produce another “autopsy” report that calls for moderating the party’s rougher edges on immigration and social issues in order to sell small government ideals to a diversifying electorate. The message will be clear: this loss falls on the Trump supporters and for indulging their worst instincts.
Trump supporters will learn the opposite lesson. They’ll see that as late as mid-September, Trump was within striking distance, only to be sold out by the party elites in the home stretch. Ramped up by a conservative media echo chamber – potentially including Trump himself on a newly-created TrumpTV network – that loves finding Republican heretics far more than creating converts, they’ll turn their pitchforks on the accommodationists who betrayed their hero.
This dynamic within the Republican Party is not new. It has been the central tension in our government since at least 2010, when a wave of Tea Party challengers took out establishment incumbents. It has continued in this Congress, where last year the conservative Freedom Caucus formed a voting bloc that ousted then-Speaker John Boehner. Ryan was, at the time, viewed as the only man in the party who could help bridge the gap between the two sides and lead it as a cohesive unit. But after some small, early successes, within months the Republican caucus was already back to being unable to corral the votes to pass a budget or move other major pieces of legislation.
If Trump continues to turn his forces against the Speaker, there are real questions about how and whether the party can continue to be managed heading into 2017. The size of the GOP majority in the House will likely be halved, from 30 to around 14-16. But majorities are meaningless unless they can agree and work together.
When the next Congress convenes, their first vote will be to choose a Speaker. If a voting bloc of 20+ members refuses to support Ryan for his “betrayal” of Trump, what then? If the “only man” who can unite the party can’t do it, where do they go? These are not rhetorical questions. I honestly don’t have the answers, and I don’t think anyone else does either.
The best way to circumvent this collapse would be to have Trump strike a conciliatory note post-election and publicly pledge his support for Ryan. Even this might not work, as the damage among the voters may already be done, and even Trump is not perpetually immune to claims of “selling out.” But it would be the most direct way to short-circuit a Boehner-style coup.
Unfortunately for Republicans, Trump is expanding his attacks on Ryan, not reining them in. His personality and style do not suggest that he will “fall in line” after a loss, nor that he will fade quietly into the background the way other general election losers have. The future of the party is now in the hands of a volatile man with no political future or particular regard for its history and relevance. How he handles the coming weeks will have significant, long-lasting effects on an already tenuous coalition.
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