Donald Trump has spent the bulk of his post-White House life in exile, occasionally popping into view for the odd viral rant as an uninvited Mar-a-Lago wedding guest or phoned-in Fox News gripe session, but otherwise spending his days golfing and taking uncanny thumbs-up photos with various B-List stars of the right-wing universe. He’s no longer on social media, save for the pathetic platform of his own making. He’s not on the rally stage. His contributions to the discourse he once dominated have been those of a heckler, firing non-sequiturs like spitballs from the back of the room. He’s remained hugely influential in the GOP—but what can get overlooked sometimes is the fact that he’s done so without really, well, doing anything.
There was a time when a mean tweet or a jeering nickname was necessary for Trump to get Republicans to do what he wanted; after half a decade of training, though, it’s become reflex. He couldn’t handle the idea of losing the election to Joe Biden; Republicans across the country immediately legitimized their leader’s bogus claims and began using them as the basis for draconian disenfranchisement laws, with Florida the most recent state to enact legislation making it harder to vote. He demands fealty above all else; his Capitol Hill worshippers, in response to Representative Liz Cheney’s insistence on condemning the deadly January 6 insurrection he inspired and shooting down his election lies, have attacked the No. 3 Republican in the House like white-blood cells swarming an unwelcome virus. Never mind that the Wyoming congresswoman is one of the most hardline conservative lawmakers in Washington, or that her father, Dick Cheney, was once Republican royalty. This is a new party, one that has traded the destructive neoconservative politics of yore for something somehow even worse: a nihilism based on grift and grievance, and organized around a cartoonish devotion to one man.
“It’s a tragedy,” Arne Carlson, former Republican governor of Minnesota, told Politico. “The problem with the revolution is they continue to get more and more extreme.”
That Trump remade the Republican party in his own ugly image is old news, obviously. Still, the last couple weeks have underscored the extent to which the ideology he unleashed has taken on a life of its own. As Axios’ Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei pointed out Friday, Trumpism is now the foundation of the GOP: His agenda, parts of which once ran counter to Republican orthodoxy, is now the institutional platform; belief in or at least tolerance for his lies, however absurd or dangerous, are a prerequisite to remain in good standing; and critics, however vocal, are being pushed aside and pushed out. In short: Where the establishment once sought to harness the power of Trumpism, the establishment now is Trumpism. To the extent there ever really was a GOP civil war after the November election and the January 6 riot, the anticipated ouster of Cheney from her House leadership role will represent the symbolic end to it: By this time next week, GOP leadership in the House will likely be “full-throated Trumpers,” as Allen and VandeHei put it.
In some ways, that won’t change much of anything—Cheney’s presence in Republican leadership has in no way kept the party from becoming more and more radicalized and anti-democratic. But her expected ouster may lay bare, for the few people left who had hope the party would move on from Trump after his defeat, what the GOP has become. “I don’t understand the Republicans,” Biden, who once predicted his opponents would have an “epiphany” after Trump, said this week in response to a question about the party’s plans to punish Cheney.
For his part, Trump is apparently growing antsy, no longer satisfied merely being the party choreographer and eager to get back on stage himself. Jason Miller, one of his top advisers, told Axios that the former president is planning to resume rallies “as soon as late spring or early summer”—an unwelcome return to the pulpit, ostensibly to promote a slate of candidates he trusts to carry out his cause until, perhaps, he gets a chance to try to win his old job back. But the fact that he will have already completed his GOP takeover by then, without having to lift a finger, is a disturbing testament to the ill-gotten and dangerous power he wields. He has already proved he can get Republicans to do his bidding. Now, with Cheney’s projected demotion, he’s proving that they’ll do it without him even needing to ask.
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