The Campaign: Abortion and Party Decay
Trump is trapped by the Reagan era's greatest achievement
Donald Trump is the opposite of a party builder. Showing no use for the Republican brand except as a vehicle for his ambitions, he has undermined the party when it has suited him, going as far as to discourage turnout in the twin Georgia senate elections that determined majority control of the chamber in 2021.
Still, he is heir to the coalition forged by Ronald Reagan and propelled by both Bushes, the coalition that constrained Clinton and Obama as they struggled with limited success to dislodge it.
Under his stewardship, Trump has stripped the party to its essentials, shrinking and radicalizing it to the point where it is almost unrecognizable. Gone are claims to limited government, personal liberty, family values, and a robust foreign policy in support of democracy, leaving just a gaudy embrace of tax cuts for the super rich—habitually a magnet for the donor class—and a nativist racism, which always provided the jet fuel.
Trump tried unsuccessfully to sell this version of the party to the country in 2020. He’s back again, this time not even pretending he can win majority support, instead hoping to bludgeon the nation into surrendering to his demands for lifelong dominance.
As he swallows the party organization and gets onetime Republican critics to bow down to him, Trump appears to be operating as a strongman—as someone who commands his party rather than stands beholden to it.
Trump has so successfully reduced the Republican party to its lowest terms that most of the time he can trash Reagan orthodoxy without being called to account by Republican partisans. As long as he promises billionaires more tax cuts and pledges to deport millions of immigrants without due process, he can abuse any plank of the Reagan platform without fear of retribution.
Any plank except abortion.
Nothing was more central to the Reagan mission than the decades-long quest to overturn abortion rights. Nothing is more closely identified with the Reagan-era prosecution of the culture wars. Nothing has been more important to securing white evangelical support.
And since the destruction of Roe two years ago, nothing has been more threatening to Republican party prospects.
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