Donald John Trump was pipped to the post by Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr, during the November 2020 US Presidential election. The 45th President thereby joined the ranks of ten previous Presidents who failed to be re-elected for a second term, while an eleventh predecessor, Grover Cleveland, remains the only person so far to have served two non-consecutive terms as American President, from 1885 to 1889, and again from 1893 to 1897. In his opinion, and that of many of his followers, ex-President Trump was “robbed” of his perceived landslide victory through pervasive electoral fraud, meaning that he was unable to carry on his mission of isolationism and economic nationalism, putting “America First” and “Making America Great Again”. The feelings of a “stolen” victory were so intense among sections of the Republican Party that eight Senators and 135 Representatives felt compelled to vote in January 2021 to overthrow the presidential election results. While we cannot be certain whether Mr. Trump will seek re-election to the highest executive office in America in 2024, there can be no denying his insatiable interest in politicking and his unrelenting desire to influence the direction of American, especially Republican, politics for years to come.
Donald Trump is by no means a natural-born Republican, having at times in the past displayed Democratic and Independent tendencies. His 2016 victory, which confounded many of his critics as well as the majority of pollsters, followed his capture of the Republican nomination from conventional GOP establishment figures through his conservative populist policies and also because many American voters were no longer enamoured of the nation’s political elites and distrusted the mainstream media.
The Republican Party is slightly younger than the Democratic Party, which dates back to 1828. At the time of its birth in the 1850s, America was a different kind of two-party state, made up of conservative Democrats and progressive Whigs. A group of Whigs from the northern states, who opposed the expansion of slavery allowed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the political power of the southern “slavocracy”, and instead sought equality for all American citizens, came together on 9 May 1854 at Mrs Crutchett’s select boarding house in Washington DC, and ended up calling themselves “Republicans”. Within no time, the Whig party, already in terminal decline, ceased to exist as many Whigs became Republicans instead, including one Abraham Lincoln in May 1856.
Under Lincoln’s Presidency, from 1860 onwards, and under his Republican successors, slaves were emancipated, voting rights were restored, and the Reconstruction of the South was begun. The pace of progress proved too fast for many, and the Republicans soon entered a conservative phase, after an economic downturn in 1893, just as Democrats regained control in the South. Ever since, Republican politics has veered from conservative to progressive and back again, punctuated by economic crashes in 1893, 1929, and 2008, following which the party lost power. Progressive phases under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower alternated with swings to the right. The latest conservative phase began in the 1960s, with the Presidential candidature of Barry Goldwater. Democratic-sponsored civil rights legislation, to the dismay of segregationist southern Democrats, just as increasingly liberal northern Democrats began to court the African American vote, prompted the beleaguered Southern Democrats to find a new home in a newly right-leaning Republican Party. The conservative trend in the Republican Party continued to gain in strength under Donald Trump, who also introduced a non-negotiable requirement of allegiance and loyalty to himself and Trumpism in its various manifestations.
Under Trump, some divisions in the Republican party also emerged, as a small number of conventional Republican politicians rejected his modus operandi. The Lincoln Project, a super political action committee (PAC), was formed in 2019 by past and present Republicans, in direct opposition to Trump. The Club for Growth, another conservative PAC, has also supported several opponents of Trump-endorsed or otherwise pro-Trump candidates. High-level Republican opposition came from the likes of Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s sole Representative, and a handful of other bold members of the US House of Representatives and US Senate. Not all Republican politicians bought into conspiracy theories concerning Trump’s electoral defeat, with ten Representatives and seven Senators voting for his impeachment after the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Then, on 19 May 2021, 35 Republican Representatives voted in favour of setting up a National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the US Capitol Complex, only to be blocked by a Republican filibuster in the US Senate on May 28.
The midterm primary season began on 1 March 2022 in Texas, and will continue through much of the remainder of the year, setting the scene for the 8 November 2022 midterm elections. Primary elections are state-level and local-level contests in which a party selects its candidates for the November 2022 nationwide elections. The system is complicated, varying from state to state, and within any given state from party to party. In open primaries, voters do not have to register with their party of choice in advance of the election date, while in closed primaries they have to register beforehand. In most states, each party conducts its own ballot, while in some states, all candidates are listed on the same ballot and the top two candidates are chosen, irrespective of political affiliation. The winner most often requires only a simple majority, in first-past-the-post systems, while other systems require a more qualified majority, when the victor has to receive over half of the votes cast. Run-off elections are held when no candidate wins an outright majority.
Trump has endorsed over a hundred candidates for the US Senate, the US House of Representatives, state legislatures, and various statewide posts, such as governor, state secretary, and attorney general. His endorsements may either feature in statements issued by his Save America political action committee, or be posted on the social media app Telegram or increasingly on his nascent Truth Social app, or even be declared impromptu at his rallies. Trump endorsements are highly sought-after by Republican candidates and appear to matter a great deal. After all, as he has remarked recently, “we have to pick the one that’s going win”. What Trump demands above all is personal loyalty and a shared belief in the unfairness of the 2020 Presidential election, which means that those Republicans who voted for his impeachment, or otherwise doubted his assertions of electoral fraud, are persona non grata as far as he is considered. What seems to help is likeability from Trump’s perspective, a media-savvy public profile, and most of all, longstanding acquaintance or friendship with Trump whenever applicable. Candidates are expected to confirm their loyalty to Trump before the media and at election rallies, and on occasion may even turn up at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, to seek the blessings of the great man in person. An endorsement not only appears to propel a candidate into the ranks of the front-runners, but also opens up new sources of funding, attracts fresh media attention, and may lead to a much sought-after onstage appearance at one of Trump’s ongoing mega-rallies. Trump is not totally inflexible and seems prepared to endorse previous critics of his if they appear to have turned the corner and become more to his liking. For example, J.D. Vance, a candidate for the US Senate in Ohio, who supported Trump’s rival, Senator Mitt Romney, in 2016, has now been rewarded with a Trump endorsement as a reward for his recently declared allegiance to the ex-President.
Donald Trump is by no means a spent force. He continues to command considerable support of millions of American from many constituencies, including such unlikely bedfellows as libertarian billionaires, dispossessed white blue-collar voters, neglected rural folks, disenchanted lower-middle-class people, evangelical Christians, pro-life activists, gun-club members, white supremacists, right-wing Latinos, and Blacks for Trump, among many others. Early indications of the benefits of endorsement by Trump are beginning to emerge as the midterm elections gather momentum. All 33 Trump-endorsed candidates in the opening round of the primaries in Texas, many of them incumbents such as Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Don Patrick, either won the Republican nomination outright or advanced into the run-off stage. Whatever the outcome of the November 2022 midterm elections, the results may come to be regarded as both a referendum on Biden’s presidency as well as an indicator of possible support for a future Trumpian presidency.
Ashis Banerjee.