Donald Trump's rise to the top of the GOP presidential field is just the latest iteration of the conservative backlash against the party that started with Barry Goldwater in 1964, pundits Craig Shirley and David Bossie tell
Newsmax TV.
Donald Trump's rise is exactly what the American people, especially the conservative Republican primary voters, want, said Bossie, president and chairman of Citizens United on Wednesday's "The Hard Line."
"In 2010 these same voices sent Republicans back to Congress in the majority and took back the speakership with John Boehner," he said, but Boehner then wasted the next five years.
"Those same voices in America took back the U.S. Senate because the Republicans said, 'We can only do it if we have the Senate,'" Bossie said. "The American people gave the Republicans the Senate and, of course, nothing happened."
Watch Newsmax TV on
DirecTV Ch. 349, DISH Ch. 223 and
Verizon FiOS Ch. 115. Get Newsmax TV on your cable system —
Click Here Now
Trump's nomination might not change the government forever, but it will change politics at least for a while especially on the Republican side, said Shirley, a presidential historian and Reagan biographer.
"The Democratic Party has essentially been the party of big government since 1932 in the rise of Franklin Roosevelt," Shirley told host Ed Berliner. "The Republican Party has gone through three revolutionary phases now. Once in 1964 and again in 1980 and now with the rise of Donald Trump, the rise of the tea party, the rise of intellectual populism, anti-Washington attitude."
Trump is at least temporarily remaking the Republican Party into something different than the "elites" would like, and that is why they are gathering money for a last ditch effort to try to stop him, Shirley said.
"This has been coming for a long time," Bossie said. "Donald Trump is simply riding this wave. He understands it. He gets it. He's riding what's called a political movement, and that's what these Republican establishment leaders don't understand."
Fighting Trump simply makes him stronger, Shirley said, because Trump is able to point to the fact that the big-money elites are trying to oust him.
Republicans should be trying to reach out to Trump to help him govern, he said, and by not doing so are creating a polarization in the party.
Establishment figures that are starting the #NeverTrump Twitter hashtag are working at cross purposes because they want to stop Trump at all costs, but then are backing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's campaign, which is taking votes away from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has a better chance against Trump.
A one-on-one race between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump is "something the establishment hates to think about," he said.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.