The End of the Republican Party We Know?

A Business Party 

Are we seeing the end of the Republican Party as we know it? I think that is very possible because the level of dissension within the party is tearing the party apart. Dissension within a party is nothing new because American political parties have never been ideologically unified. They are electoral coalitions, and as such, they have always been big tents that sheltered groups with very different beliefs and agendas. That works reasonably well as long as the intraparty differences are not too large.

The differences within the Republican Party used to be manageable.  The party has been the party of business at least since the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. The party has been strongly supported by organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the party supported isolationism and opposed the entry of the United States into World War II. However, that changed after the Japanese attack. During World War II and during the Cold War the party supported America’s role as “the leader of the free world.” In that role, we maintained a very large military establishment (“the military-industrial complex”), and we intervened aggressively in countries as diverse as Guatemala, Congo, Iran and Vietnam. Those interventions were all supported by Republicans. 

 A Party Torn by Internal Dissension

Today, Republicans are deeply divided over both domestic policy and foreign policy. On domestic policy, some Republicans are seeking the support of labor unions. In addition, leading Republicans have claimed that our political system is rigged against ordinary people. Some leading Republicans also claim that our elections are not honest.

A party cannot indefinitely be supported by the National Association of Manufacturers and also by major industrial unions. Moreover, a party supported by business cannot indefinitely claim that our political system is rigged against ordinary people. After all, businesses are among the main beneficiaries of our political system. 

On foreign policy, we have the Trump wing of the party returning to something like the isolationist position that Republicans supported before Pearl Harbor. Trump and his supporters claim that we spend too much on defending our allies, who ought to pay for their own defense. At the same time, we have other Republicans claiming that we need to increase our military spending to counter the threat of China in the Western Pacific. Finally, we have election posters everywhere saying that we should elect Mr. Trump as president, and we have Republicans in counties in swing states who are preparing to file legal challenges to the elections in the event that he does not win. At the same time, we have major Republican leaders who have said that they are going to vote for Ms.Harris because Mr. Trump is a danger to our democracy. 

In 2016, the party managed to live with these contradictions by perpetrating a fraud on the American people. Mr. Trump won the election with his populist rhetoric. He claimed to be the voice of American working people, but the biggest achievement of his administration was an enormous tax cut that benefited mainly business and the very wealthy. He got away with this egregious fraud, but he will not be able to do that indefinitely. The people who have supported him will eventually expect him to produce concrete benefits for them in return. 

The party thought that he could get away with supporting conservative economic policies as long as he made good on his promise to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v Wade, but that approach has backfired badly. In 2022, the party lost several congressional seats because women mobilized against the Republican candidates, and there is a good chance that the party will lose again this November. From the point of view of the business Republicans, Trumpism has become very costly, and from the point of view of Trump's supporters, the business Republicans are preventing the adoption of policies that might really benefit American working people. Here is an example that appeared only two days ago. Mr. Trump is calling for the impeachment of Vice President Kamala Harris while other prominent Republicans have said publicly that they will vote for her for president. 

The immigration issue is also divisive. On the one hand, we have candidates for president and vice president who have proposed a policy of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. At the same time, the party depends for financial support on the owners of businesses that employ many of those same undocumented immigrants.

What Next?

I do not see how the party's extreme level of internal dissension can be supported indefinitely. Something has to give. If Mr. Trump wins in November, his control of the party will be confirmed, but the party will very likely lose business support because it has ceased to be a party of business. If Mr. Trump loses in November, he will also lose control of the party, but without him, the party will lose much of the working-class support that it now enjoys. Either way, the party will be weakened. I don’t know what will happen after that, but if the Republican Party survives, it will become a very different party.