Four years ago, the Republicans who gathered in Charlotte to renominate President Donald Trump didn’t bother to draft a party platform, apparently thinking that “More Trump” was enough to inform the public about their plans for a second term.
It probably did, but not in the way Republicans hoped: Voters dumped Trump for Joe Biden.
Americans vote for people, not policies. But these manifestos, no matter how banal or boring, are a quadrennial Rorschach test of a party’s mental health. The Republican decision to recycle its 2016 platform is a sign of a new generation of Republicans. It seemed calculated This is to cover up internal ideological rifts and frequent contradictions among the candidates.
This time, the party leaders New Platform Heading into the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next month, Trump has completely dislodged the GOP’s conservative wing and its dwindling opposition from any illusions about a “stolen election,” so this time he can expect blind obedience from the party.
The platform writers’ unwelcome task will be to distill the essence of Trumpism into something resembling a compelling governing philosophy. Incomprehensible It can’t be easy to hear those words coming out of your master’s mouth.
But they are right-wing theorists, think tanks, and Ivy League PopulistsLike Senators J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Josh Hawley (R-Missouri). Binding these threads together is the Heritage Foundation, once a vibrant epicenter of conservative intellectual excitement and debate but now a boringly predictable MAGA propaganda arm.
Heritage’s Blueprint for a Second Trump Term Project 2025claims to be a direct descendant of the institute’s “mission to leadership.”The influential 1980 handbookThis new summary of the policies of the Reagan Revolution is devoid of Reagan’s good-natured optimism and decency, and instead repeats Trump’s fierce indictments of America as a corrupt and failed state ruled by immigrants, criminals and a traitorous elite.
The document details a plan for a cultural and political counter-revolution to “save” America from a cabal of populist demons: the radical left, the administrative state, socialist elites, the Washington establishment, woke culture warriors, Wilsonian globalists, and Big Tech, which it characterizes as a “tool of the Chinese government.”
In 1964,Paranoid Style in American PoliticsHistorian Richard Hofstadter has explored the “angry minds” on the fringes of American political discourse. Today, irrational politics have spilled over into the mainstream, thanks to election deniers and conspiracy theorists taking over the Republican Party.
Key figures in the Republican Party’s attempt to codify Trumpian populism are Russ VaughtHe led the Office of Budget Management under the Trump administration, is policy director for the 2024 platform committee and is a leading candidate to become chief of staff if Trump wins.
Vought, once a protégé of Vice President Mike Pence, says the 2020 election was stolen and claims it is the price of entry into Trump’s sanctuary. Self-proclaimed “Christian nationalists” also stoke panic over an immigrant “invasion” of America, which they believe will weaken the religious foundations of our national identity and unity.
Nationalism and a return to Judeo-Christian morality (including anti-abortion and traditional gender roles) are central themes of today’s reactionary populism.ClaimWe live in a “post-Constitutional” America, where federal bureaucrats have monopolized power and are imposing their secular, left-wing dogma on an unwilling population.
But the solution he proposes is not to return these allegedly usurped legislative powers to Congress, but to engineer an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of the President.
Vought said:Radical ConstitutionalismThe bill would “put all executive branch agencies under presidential control, including the Department of Justice, the FBI, the intelligence agencies, and the Federal Reserve System.” Included in the bill are powers that would allow the president to veto congressional funds for programs he doesn’t like, call up the U.S. military to quell protests, and help police round up millions of immigrants for deportation.
When Populists talk about “giving power back to the people,” they are actually talking about a plan to overturn the checks and balances of the Constitution and establish an imperial presidency. Jefferson and Madison must be spinning in their graves.
While setting the stage for strongman politics at home, the new Republican platform endorses Trump’s “America First” policy and the retreat of the U.S. from global leadership. Economically, this means a mountain of new trade restrictions. Despite the failed tariffs imposed during his presidency, the U.S. The trade deficit has grown under the Trump administration. He has pledged to impose a 10% tariff on most imports. This, among other things, Sudden deletion Millions of labor immigrants have left the U.S. workforce.
Republican “Conservative nationalist” are skeptical of U.S. involvement in international efforts to solve global problems such as climate change. They chafe at the costs and burdens of collective security alliances, but few go so far as to threaten to withdraw from NATO as Trump has. Most argue that Russia is a European problem and that the U.S. needs to confront China, and seem ready to abandon Ukraine.
In short, we are witnessing a mass Republican turn to reactionary populism and a demand that Americans “return” to a so-called “better past”: the sexual mores of the 1950s, the protectionism and isolationism of the 1930s, and the xenophobia and religious fundamentalism of the 1920s.
The newly released policy platform is aimed at stoking the resentment of Trump’s most ardent supporters — working-class voters with legitimate grievances against both parties’ political establishment — but its vision for governing is backward-looking, fixated on polarizing scapegoats rather than solving shared problems, disdainful of the interests and feelings of Democrats, and steeped in a paralyzing pessimism about our country’s enduring strength and ability to overcome our current dilemmas.
Working Americans deserve to be treated better.
Will Marshall isProgressive Policy Institute.
