Why Does Donald Trump Still Seem To Hold Sway Over The Republican Party
Why after leading the Republican Party during a period when it lost its majority in the US House of Representatives and the Senate and its power in the White House does former president Donald Trump still seem to hold the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Reagan in his thrall?
For US politics watchers, who on the weekend watched on as 43 Republican senators voted to acquit Trump of an act of reckless incitement played out in front of the cameras, that is the $64,000 question.
Or rather, it’s the 74,222,593-vote question.
That is the record number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump last November more than has been cast for any previous president. Unfortunately for them, an even greater number 81,281,502 voted for his rival, now-President Joe Biden.
As much as anything else, those numbers sum up the quandary Republicans find themselves in.
They have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and only remain competitive because older white voters, who tend to be more likely to support conservative candidates, also tend to vote in greater numbers in a non-compulsory electoral system.
Those same voters are also the most likely to cast a ballot in next year’s house and senate primaries, and the next midterm elections in November 2022 which will again determine who holds power in congress. They are the voters who initially flocked to Donald Trump.
Cities Have Become The Deciding Factor In Nearly Every Matter Of National Consequence
Michael Hendrix is director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute.
Even as America grew more polarized by geography and density over the past four years, culminating in the 2020 election with one of the greatest urban-rural partisan divides in our history, this countrys metropolitan areas have consolidated power to become the deciding factor in nearly every matter of national consequence. And no wonder: Americas 50 largest metros alone account for half the countrys population, more than half its votes and two-thirds of its economy. Even as population growth slowed in some core cities over the past four years, their surrounding suburbs still boomed, in many cases becoming large cities in their own right. And rather than fleeing to the countryside during the Covid-19 pandemic, people leaving big metros have mostly moved to other big metros, such as Atlanta, Austin, Nashville and Tampa.
Andrew Bilardello 63 Retired Police Captain And President Of The Republican Club At The Villages Retirement Community In Central Florida
For years Ive been saying what we need is a businessperson to be president. I was fortunateIve met Donald Trump on many occasions at his golf course in West Palm Beach and at Mar-a-Lago, where we would host fundraisers . When the cameras werent rolling, hes a different person. Hes a lot nicer. Sometimes when the cameras are rolling, he changes. And there are times that I dont like that Donald Trump. I didnt like the way he mocked and belittled people. But it worked for him. He got elected president.
My mother is a Democrat. My daughter is a Democrat. She hated Donald Trump, and there was a lot of friction between us because of my position. She sees a lot of my statements, and she gets offended. How could you support him? How could you do this? Im like, Honey, you cant take this personally. I do what I can to promote my party and my partys beliefs. I do what I can to promote my candidates and try to get them elected. But if they dont, I move on. Right now, as a former military guy and a former law enforcement officer, Joe Bidens my president. I may not like his politics, but Im going to do everything in my power to succeed.
*Grimaldo asked to use a pseudonym because her work discourages her from making public political statements.
This is part of What We Learned, a series of reflections on the meaning and legacy of the Trump years.
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Weve Forgotten What Respect Is
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a senior adviser at Akin Gump, represented South Florida in Congress for three decades.
These past four years have taught me that, when talking about politics, we must find a way forward that treats others with respect, even when we disagree strongly with them. What has happened to the cliché we would use when the differences in our opinions seemed insurmountable: Lets agree to disagree? Now we think we must fight to the death, to cling stubbornly to our positions and cede no ground. On all sides of the political spectrum, we stick to our own views because to do otherwise would seem weak. It is not enough that I win. I must insist that you lose.
We have forgotten that we are all Americans. We all fundamentally want the same things: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we can have something in common with our Founding Fathers of 244 years ago, surely we have common ground now. Lets look for it and stop assuming the worst of our neighbors because of their campaign yard signs. Lets make a concerted effort to debate and disagree with others but to not berate them, belittle them or call them names. Enough. Basta ya.
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A Clue About This Difficult Political Surgery
Reuters: Yuri Gripas
Trump is like a drug Republicans are yet to find a way to kick. By most accounts, few Republicans in Congress want him back, and many believe that if a secret ballot had been held in the Senate on the weekend, more than the required number of 17 would have joined with the 50 Democrats to convict him and ban him from holding office in the future.
Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s speech condemning Trump as “practically and morally responsible” for the deadly January 6 attack on Congress by his supporters, offers a clue about the difficult piece of political surgery he is now trying to perform.
“Seventy-four million Americans did not invade the Capitol,” McConnell said. “Hundreds of rioters did. Seventy-four million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it. One person did. Just one.”
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Trump Could Make The Speech Police Go Away
Im in my early 30s and I grew up in San Francisco in a liberal home. And I have a very difficult time keeping up with all the various appropriate and inappropriate terms used to reference people and their causes. Trump makes brash and uncompromising statements about issues many people feel very passionate about. When he spoke about illegal immigration he made statements that many people agree with and are afraid to state. A lot of that fear is a fear of being labeled a racist or a fear of violating constantly changing societal norms. Its frustrating to listen to politicians speak and make no statements. Its even more frustrating to watch politicians fold in the presence of the slightest bit of pressure. The appeal of Trump isnt because they trust him to make the right decisions, its the hope that he will influence the rest of the field to make strong statements regardless of the media backlash.
So Why Do Ethnic Germans And Italians Seem To Like Trump And The Gop
Italian Americans seem to have been among the first aboard the Trump train of disaffected white voters that swept him to victory in the Republican primaries.
Italian heritage was a significant predictor of Trump support, Patrick Ruffini, a Republican digital strategist and founder of the media firm Engage in Alexandria, Virginia, told BuzzFeed News.
In the primaries, Trump dominated in the Northeast, Appalachia and the South, performing particularly well among a demographic once called Reagan Democrats. In the Northeast, many of these voters were Italian Americans.
In favoring Trump, voters with German ancestry are siding with one of their own: Trumps grandfather, Friedrich Trump, then a 16-year-old barber, sailed in 1885 from Bremen, Germany, to make a new life in New York.
But that seems unlikely to explain their preference for the Republican candidate.
I’m pretty sure these voters do not see Trump as a friendly co-ethnic, James Gimpel, a political scientist at the University of Maryland who has studied the persistent influence of European ancestry on voting habits in New England, told BuzzFeed News.
Indeed, when asked about their preferences in a congressional race with a generic Republican and Democrat, voters who identified as most German were more likely than others to prefer the GOP.
Voters were asked if they would support a Republican or Democrat, if a congressional election were held in their district today. Groups and margins of error as above.
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Economic Divisions Are Driving Political Ones
John Austin directs the Michigan Economic Center and is a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Its become clear over the past four years that, unless we address the root economic causes of many American voters anger and social alienation, we will remain a divided nation, with many remaining susceptible to the message of demagogues like Donald Trump. In much of left-behind rural America, and still struggling communities that dot the industrial Midwest around my home, anxieties about the economic future interact with a perceived loss of identity, status and control in a changing society. These dynamics generate a toxic brew of resentments of others, whether coastal elites or immigrants, and cravings for a return to a simpler and ordered time.
From afar, it appears that Joe Biden rebuilt the Blue Wall of Midwest industrial states this year and won over the white, working-class voters that powered Trump to the presidency in 2016. But Bidens narrow victory in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania was made possible only by an historically high anti-Trump voter turnout, particularly among African Americans in cities. Working-class -whites from still struggling manufacturing towns and farm country doubled down on Trumpism, more excited than ever over Trumps mix of economic nostalgia, nationalism and nativism.
Majority Of Americans In New Poll Say It Would Be Bad For The Country If Trump Ran In 2024
A majority of Americans in a new poll think it would be bad for the country if former President Trump
The survey, conducted by Quinnipiac University, found that 60 percent of respondents said it would be bad for the country if Trump were to launch a bid for president in 2024.
Thirty-two percent of respondents, however, said another Trump campaign would be good for the country.
For months the former president has been teasing an announcement on whether he will throw his hat in the ring for a third attempt at the presidency.
Trump last month said he has made up his mind on whether he will run for the White House again in 2024. That decision, however, remains unknown.
Forty-nine percent of respondents polled said they think Trump will ultimately run for president in 2024, with 39 percent saying he will not. Twelve percent said they did not have an opinion.
When asked how likely they would be to vote for a candidate endorsed by Trump, 19 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to support the contender and 41 percent said they would be less likely. Thirty-seven percent of those polled said the former presidents endorsement would not make a difference in their vote.
When examined by party, 54 percent of Republicans surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate backed by Trump, with only 6 percent saying they would be less likely. Thirty-four percent of Republicans said a Trump endorsement would not make a difference.
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How Science Explains Trumps Grip On White Males
Research on risk perception can help us understand the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol
The scenes that played out at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday will forever live in infamy. As Congress prepared to certify electoral college votes and declare Joe Biden president-elect, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Building, vandalizing the halls and occupying the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
Photographs and video show a band of insurrectionists that is overwhelmingly White and male. They carried guns, Confederate flags, flags emblazoned with swastikas, QAnon placards, and, according to police, chemical irritants. They scaled exterior walls, climbed scaffolding, smashed windows, hung from balconies, and crashed through the doors of the Senate chamber, one White man charging to the dais and yelling, Trump won that election!
Hours later, more than 120 legislators, overwhelmingly White and male, still pledged to fight Bidens win.
But cognitive scientists long ago coined a term for the psychological forces that have given rise to the gendered and racialized political divide that were seeing today. That research, and decades of subsequent scholarly work, suggest that if you want to understand the Trump phenomenon, youd do well to first understand the science of risk perception.
This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.
A Dearth Of Shared Facts And Information
One of the few things that Republicans and Democrats could agree on during Trumps tenure is that they didnt share the same set of facts. In a 2019 survey, around three-quarters of Americans said most Republican and Democratic voters disagreed not just over political plans and policies, but over basic facts.
Much of the disconnect between the parties involved the news media, which Trump routinely disparaged as fake news and the enemy of the people. Republicans, in particular, expressed widespread and growing distrust of the press. In a 2019 survey, Republicans voiced more distrust than trust in 2o of the 30 specific news outlets they were asked about, even as Democrats expressed more trust than distrust in 22 of those same outlets. Republicans overwhelmingly turned to and trusted one outlet included in the study Fox News even as Democrats used and expressed trust in a wider range of sources. The study concluded that the two sides placed their trust in two nearly inverse media environments.
Some of the media organizations Trump criticized most vocally saw the biggest increases in GOP distrust over time. The share of Republicans who said they distrusted CNN rose from 33% in a 2014 survey to 58% by 2019. The proportion of Republicans who said they distrusted The Washington Post and The New York Times rose 17 and 12 percentage points, respectively, during that span.3
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Americans Are More Populist Conspiratorial And Anti
Adam M. Enders is assistant professor of political science at University of Louisville. Joseph E. Uscinski is associate professor of political science at University of Miami.
Donald Trumps candidacy and presidency exposed a rift between what politicians and journalists think Americans political views are, and what those views actually are. Elitespoliticians, journalists and other commentators, as well as a small number of politically sophisticated Americansunderstand politics through worldviews arranged neatly along a left-right continuum, ranging from Democratic to Republican, liberal to conservative. But most Americans do not see politics this way, and their views do not necessarily align with left-right principles or ideologies. And, while many Americans feel an emotional attachment to a party label, many Americans dont like either party all that much or hold closely corresponding issue preferences. Instead, many Americans see politics as a battle between the corrupt elite and the good people. Trump took advantage of such views, presenting himself as an outsider taking on a corrupt group of elite insiders. His conspiracy theories about the deep state and election rigging, for example, closely approximate what many Americans think about politics. His 2016 message about the country needing to drain the swamp was, in this sense, an ingenious ploy aimed at people who already agreed with the general sentiment.
