President Donald John Trump, our nation's 45th, transformed the Republican Party into a voice of populism.
As much as opponents want "Trumpism" to disappear, it’s not going away.
President Trump's allegation that the election was stolen reveals a long-term political strategy with a single purpose: The mobilization of Republican voters for the midterm 2022 elections and the 2024 presidential election.
Fury over the election is deep within GOP grassroots.
A recent Fox News poll reveals the extent of this anger.
Close to 70% of Republican voters polled believed that the election results were fraudulent. Another 26% of Independents and even 10% of Democrats shared the same conclusion.
This belief in a stolen election will provide a useful tool for Trump and his wing of the GOP for future political battles. Capturing populist enthusiasm is essential to a Republican Party that has been transformed by Trump.
The strategy of populist mobilization after a lost election is not new to American politics.
In 1824 the House of Representatives awarded the presidency to John Quincy Adams, who had failed to win an electoral majority in the general election.
Rival Andrew Jackson and his supporters began calling the results a "Corrupt Bargain." These accusations came when House supporters of Henry Clay, the powerful Senator from Kentucky, shifted their votes to Adams.
These suspicions seemed validated when Adams appointed Clay as his Secretary of State, a position seen at the time as a steppingstone to the presidency.
Jackson’s strategy worked.
In 1828, he won a landslide victory over Adams. Jackson, a man considered by his enemies to be an ignorant, uncouth, demagogue, who had stepped into the White House. He reshaped the Democratic Party and transformed American politics for the next three decades.
The question facing Trump Republicans is: Will this strategy work once again? Such a strategy fires up the base, but Trump already had a fired-up base. They turned out in historic numbers in 2020.
Republicans know that they need to keep stoking the populist fires, otherwise these voters might become demoralized by concluding that elections don't matter because the system is rigged. Keeping the base fired up is critical to coming intraparty battles within the GOP and to future Republican success at the polls.
Trump supporters should not be easily dismissed by his opponents who want him and "Trumpism" to disappear into oblivion. Trump put together a broad coalition of average Americans who attended Trump rallies in the tens of thousands; spontaneously organized boat regattas and car/truck parades with flags flying. Many are Hispanic and some are African American; they are Roman Catholic and Protestant and a growing number are Jewish; and while many had not gone to college, many of those that did supported Trump.
Post-Trump Republican politicians can continue to this harness enthusiasm by promoting specific kinds of reform already begun in the Trump administration e.g. tighter border security and immigration reform; small business-friendly deregulation; pushback against against Big Tech censorship; support for law and order; protections of religious freedom; and generally putting America’s interests ahead of the interests of other countries.
The Trump wing of the party understands that there are many within the GOP who want Trump to go away. They want to see him as a political anomaly who got lucky in winning the party’s nomination and then the presidency against a relatively unattractive opponent, Hillary Clinton. These Never Trumpers and Tepid Trumpers oppose Trump’s America First foreign policy; his trade war with China; his high tariff policy; tough talk on border security; his political inexperience; and what they see as a lack of presidential temperament.
The grassroots right views Trump’s opponents within the GOP as allies of the "Deep State" and everything wrong in Washington. D.C. — and the nation today.
The activist base within the Republican Party despises these so-called RINOs as much as, if not more than, the progressive left.
The larger problem for Trump’s populist strategy is that Republicans need to win back voters in the suburbs. Suburbanites are not easily drawn to populist rhetoric that pits "us against them."
It's divisive and unproductive.
Any future success of Trumpian populism in the suburbs will be largely dependent on what happens next in the next four years in a Biden administration.
In 2016, Trump capitalized on deep discontent within the electorate.
He spoke on behalf of average Americans who experienced job losses, corruption in politics, and a business and financial elite seemingly concerned only for profit at the expense of American jobs.
These voters felt betrayed by a self-serving political and economic ruling class.
Populist anger is stoked by today's cancel culture, social media censorship, and arrogant and narrow identity politics. Trump harnessed genuine discontent and profound hope within the American electorate. He articulated both anger and aspiration of a nation holding fast to patriotic values, American exceptionalism, gradual racial progress, the rule of law, and individual rights over collective rights.
This sentiment has not faded.
Populism — protest against financial, corporate, political and cultural elites — is not going away. The 2020 election won’t end with any rhetorical calls for unity.
We are in a volatile time in American politics, a time of disequilibrium.
Yet disequilibrium brings opportunities for stabilization. This comes when self-serving elites bow to the voice of the people and accept real reform — reforms not just benefitting Washington insiders, big corporations, or narrow identity groups.
Without this, there should be no doubt that Trumpian populism will continue.
Donald T. Critchlow is Kazin Family Professor at Arizona State University and author of In Defense of Populism: Protest and Democracy.
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