(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
SUSAN DAVIS, HOST:
Hey, there. It’s the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I’m Susan Davis. I cover politics.
DON GONYEA, HOST:
I’m Don Gonyea, national political correspondent.
MARA LIASSON, HOST:
And I’m Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
DAVIS: I see you and I raise you there. Today on the show…
GONYEA: (Laughter).
DAVIS: …We’re going to talk about how Donald Trump reshaped the Republican Party and where the party might go in his second term. Don, I always think that every time we start to engage in this conversation, we need to begin it with a little bit of humility because the rise of Donald Trump was really something that I think it’s fair to say the press didn’t see coming, but, most importantly, the Republican Party didn’t see coming.
GONYEA: That’s absolutely true. Let’s flash back for a moment to Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama in that election, right? The sense of the Republican Party was that they needed to rethink everything about what they were. I mean, the core principles were still good – strong on foreign policy, low taxes, all of that – but they were losing the votes of women, they were losing the votes of minorities, and they were generally seen as a party that was out of step. So what the Republican Party did after that election was convene with a bunch of leaders and a bunch of their kind of wisest heads, and they kind of sequestered themselves away. And then they released something called the Republican Party autopsy, and the sense was, we need to diagnose the problem. Autopsy – a very strong word, right? – but they needed to diagnose the problem before they could forward. And the point was that they needed to take a softer tone to women, minorities, the LGBTQ community. They needed to back comprehensive immigration reform and generally to be more inclusive. So that was right after the 2012 election, and in 2016 along comes Donald Trump.
DAVIS: Mara, it’s such a good reminder that in our field of politics there really is no such thing as experts, because the smartest people in the room, in the party, can still be completely wrong about the moment.
LIASSON: Well, you know, you’ve heard me say this a hundred times – covering politics is an exercise in humility because every day we get to wake up and find out all the ways we were wrong. And one thing that happened back in 2016 is the Republican establishment thought that if they just took two aspirin and laid down, when they got up, Donald Trump would be gone.
DAVIS: (Laughter).
LIASSON: And it just didn’t happen. You know, the question now is, are we in the midst of a realignment? Well, guess what? You can’t – you don’t know that till the realignment has happened.
DAVIS: Yeah.
LIASSON: You can’t tell while you’re in the middle of it. And we don’t know – Donald Trump ran as a populist. He beat two women, and he lost to one man. Now, how much of that is the reason he won? How much of it was worldwide inflation? How much of it was his unique kind of shameless, celebrity, strongman brand? We don’t know how much of it is unique to him and how much of it is unique to the party, but we’re just going to have to wait and find out.
DAVIS: I do think, though, Don, that Donald Trump – and this is one of the many ironies of him – this wealthy New York, Wall Street candidate really captured the hearts and minds of a lot of working-class people in this country. And while he expanded the tent in the 2024 election, back in 2016, like, he really tapped in to white working-class anger in this country, and I think that that’s where a lot of the realignment started to come from – a group of people that, frankly, the elite of the Republican Party didn’t think that much about.
GONYEA: It is fascinating to kind of look back at that now. He kind of did what they said they were trying to do with the autopsy, but he just did it in a way that they couldn’t even begin to imagine. The Republican Party, when they did that autopsy, didn’t think, we’re going to become the party of working-class people in America. You know, Reagan had made some inroads with autoworkers and the Reagan Democrats in Macomb County, but that was always kind of seen as a measure of Reagan’s special appeal. And those workers do want lower taxes and all of that, so there were issues that were appealing to them. But Trump did all of that, but he also, despite being, you know, the billionaire, found a way to speak their language. And I was talking to a lot of autoworkers during the 2016 campaign, and I will not sit here today, you know, eight years later, and say, oh, I predicted the result of 2016 based on my conversations with Michigan autoworkers. But I did have conversations with editors saying, I’m hearing things I haven’t heard before.
DAVIS: Yeah.
GONYEA: I’m hearing these workers talk about Republicans and talk about a Republican candidate as though – not the way they talked about Mitt Romney or whatever. They talked about Donald Trump as though he was one of them, that he understood them, that he was on their side, and that has proven to be a very enduring thing.
DAVIS: The difference to me, too, Mara, of how much the party itself has changed in such a relative short period of time – because if you think back to Trump when he won the first time, which was a surprise – like, Donald Trump himself wasn’t confident he was going to win that election. So much of the party was still defined by sort of Reagan/Bush-era Republicans. On Capitol Hill, Paul Ryan was the speaker of the House. Mitch McConnell was the Senate majority leader. There was this sense that there would still be this, like, establishment check on Trump. And I think it’s fair to say that that opposition has completely folded. It’s almost nonexistent at this point.
LIASSON: I agree with that, but not because the party has gone through some ideological shift. It’s because it’s become the party that stands for whatever Trump wants on a given moment. And what to me is so interesting, if we’re going to talk about has the Republican Party changed permanently into a kind of isolationist, multiethnic, working-class party that gives billionaires tax cuts – you know, this is what we’re waiting to see. If he’s – if they’re going to really be a multiethnic, working-class party, are they going to raise the minimum wage? Are they going to pass bills that favor workers over corporate power? We don’t know. We don’t even know if Trump is going to follow through on a lot of his threats this time. We certainly think this time he has the ability and the experience to do what he wants more than he did in the first term.
DAVIS: Don, it’s also kind of amazing because it wasn’t that the Republican Party had a lack of talent or a lack of ambition. I mean, remember how crowded the stage was back in 2016?
GONYEA: Oh, yeah.
DAVIS: But Trump, in a way, has sort of single-handedly ended the political careers of so many other Republicans who wanted to be president, and it’s hard to see a path in 2024 America for someone like Chris Christie or Jeb Bush, right? Like, those days are also over.
GONYEA: And remember Scott Walker? Remember…
DAVIS: Barely. Barely.
GONYEA: …Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin? Yeah. He was the next big thing. He was from Wisconsin, a neighboring state to Iowa. He wowed people in his first, very early campaign appearances in 2015, it was, when he was running for president, and he didn’t even make it to caucus day…
DAVIS: Yeah.
GONYEA: …Because he had been so swamped. And, yeah, you mentioned Chris Christie, Jeb Bush. Christine Todd Whitman was seen as a future of the Republican Party at one point. And now I think we can add Nikki Haley. You know, maybe it’s a little premature – she’s still young, she’s still in the game, but it feels like she’s also kind of part of that list and even Governor DeSantis in Florida. And, you know, Marco Rubio has found a way because he’s still in the Senate and is now a secretary of state nominee. But this whole kind of core group of GOP talent that was kind of collectively seen as the future of the party, they’re not even in the discussion anymore, and that is because Donald Trump tipped the cart over.
DAVIS: All right, let’s take a quick break, and we’ll talk more about this when we get back.
And we’re back. And, Mara, I do think there’s a point worth making now, as we shift to the next Trump term, that if – Trump was not ready on Day 1 when he first entered office in 2017, but everything about the way that this transition is operating seems that they have a very clear idea of what they want to do in Trump 2.0.
LIASSON: Yeah, absolutely. He certainly had his list of people. He knew where – what jobs he wanted to give them. The big question is, he’s more ready to do what he wants.
DAVIS: Yeah.
LIASSON: Are the voters ready to support him in all those things? We know that they voted for lower prices and a secure border. We don’t know if they voted for him hoping that he would pardon the January 6 prisoners, convicted felons, that he would start a trade war, that he would fire tens of thousands of federal workers. We don’t know if that’s what they voted for, and we’re going to find out because he says he’s ready to do all of those things on Day 1.
DAVIS: I also think, when I’m thinking about the next Trump administration, I think one of the things we have to acknowledge is sort of the norms, the way that we’ve expected presidents to conduct themselves historically. And I think that Trump has sort of blown that all up. And in some ways, I think the lesson, to me, of the 2024 election is that America is OK with that. I mean, Trump had so much baggage in the reelection campaign – he was a convicted felon, all of the events around January 6 in which he attempted to overturn the 2020 election, the fact that he never fully acknowledged that he lost that election. This was not unknown to the country, and they reelected him, and I think that there’s a lesson for a lot of people, including us, that maybe obsessing about the norms of what we should expect of politicians – the country might not care as much as we think that they do.
LIASSON: The other thing that I think is important about norms is the difference between norms about personal behavior and then the norms about accepting democratic institutions and checks and balances. And I don’t think that voters have really thought that one through.
DAVIS: Really?
LIASSON: Yeah. Yeah, I don’t. I don’t think they said, oh, we want a president who’s an authoritarian, and we hope that he governs, you know, like a dictator. I don’t think they thought that. I think they said, he seems strong – we want lower prices and a secure border.
DAVIS: You know, I think I would disagree with you a little bit there, Mara, because I think that Trump campaigned on this stuff so out loud and so articulately about how much – how he wanted to govern, and that – I think that a lot of voters see that Washington is – they think it’s too big, it’s too corrupt, and you just need a disruptor. You need someone who’s going to smash the system.
LIASSON: I agree with that. I agree with the change candidate part of that, but I don’t think that they specifically thought it would be a good idea if there were no more checks and balances, it would be a good idea if he weaponizes the Justice Department against his enemies, because as you and I know – you were in the Philadelphia suburbs – voters kept on saying, Republicans, he’s just kidding. He’s being sarcastic.
DAVIS: Yeah.
LIASSON: He won’t really do this. And they discounted a lot of the extreme stuff.
DAVIS: Yeah. But also, Don, I mean, Donald Trump enters office the second time – you could make the case, arguably the most powerful president in American history when you consider the recent Supreme Court rulings that really expanded the notion that the president kind of is above the law.
GONYEA: Oh, absolutely. And, again, what we know about him is he will always push it, right? He’ll push it, not just to the limits, but beyond the limits. And, again, I do talk to a lot of voters, and it’s not at all unusual for me to encounter a Trump voter who says, well, I didn’t vote for that, but I still support the direction he’s taking the country. Or, no, I don’t necessarily approve of that, but let’s not forget that, blah, blah, blah – you know? – and they ultimately stick with him. So there’s this elasticity to his support and what he can get away with. But it is very important to note that because of that recent Supreme Court ruling that did expand protections from prosecution for – not just for Trump, for any president…
DAVIS: For any president, yeah.
GONYEA: …But he’s the beneficiary right now – is that the president can do a lot more. And it brings to mind that old Richard Nixon line – if the president does it, it’s not illegal. Well, now we may be in a place where that is much closer to reality because of this Supreme Court ruling.
DAVIS: And, Mara, Trump is very clear, and the Trump administration staff around him is very clear, that they want to push the power of executive authority. They want to see how far it can go. And there’s a lot of ideology around that that says that, hey, maybe the president should be more powerful.
LIASSON: Oh, well, that’s been around for years and years. That predates Trump…
DAVIS: Sure.
LIASSON: …The idea that we need a strong executive, and that there shouldn’t be, quote, “independent executive branch agencies.” But, look, the founders created a system of checks and balances, broadly distributed power, because they knew that they couldn’t stop someone with authoritarian – or they would have said monarchical – tendencies from being elected, but they hoped that they could set up a system that would prevent that person from doing too much damage if he did get elected. So we’re now going to find out, especially because the Supreme Court seems to be tinkering around the edges in our system to make the executive much more powerful, with fewer checks and balances – we’re going to see how that system that our founders created holds up against a president like Trump.
DAVIS: I also think we’re going to find out pretty quickly because the sense I get talking to Republicans on Capitol Hill, in their conversations with the administration, is that they want to blow the walls out in the first year of his second term. One, he’s already a lame duck, so he only has four more years in office. And I think they’re acutely aware, from Trump 1.0, that the midterms could have consequences. It’s a razor-thin House majority. He might only have full Republican control for the first two years in office, and they want to go big.
LIASSON: Yeah, but you’re talking about legislation.
DAVIS: Yes.
LIASSON: There’s so many things Trump can do, even if he did lose one house, or both, of Congress in a midterm.
DAVIS: Sure.
LIASSON: I think Trump is very focused on executive action.
DAVIS: Do you think, Mara, and you said – and you’re right – like, we just don’t know, because we’re living this in real time. But how lasting do you think Donald Trump’s effect on the Republican Party is – in that I think of my whole life, for most of my life, we always viewed the Republican Party in the shadow of Ronald Reagan…
LIASSON: Yeah.
DAVIS: …And I have to think that, like, my kids will grow up seeing a Republican Party that rises out of the shadow of Donald Trump.
LIASSON: I think that the party is changing, for sure, and changing probably permanently to a more isolationist, anti-immigrant party, and they’re no longer the small-government, strong-defense, culturally conservative party that they were during Reagan. The question is, can another Trump-like candidate win? We’ve seen a lot of Republicans try to emulate his style and fail.
DAVIS: Yeah.
LIASSON: He is a very unusual, unique figure. So to me, the contradictions in the Trump Republican Party are so profound. How can you be a multiethnic, working-class party that gives tax breaks to billionaires, and every time you have a choice between billionaires or corporations over workers, you choose the corporations? I think that is a deep contradiction that the Democrats will try to exploit.
DAVIS: Don, what’s – you talk to a lot of voters. What’s your sense of how they view JD Vance?
GONYEA: They don’t think a lot about JD Vance, frankly. He doesn’t come up. And, you know, because Ohio was not considered a battleground state this year, it wasn’t really in play, I wasn’t talking to Ohio voters once we got to the general – and that’s the place where Vance is best known. But hardcore Democrats, committed Democratic voters were the ones who brought up JD Vance as someone they worry about as the kind of heir to whatever it is that Trump leaves us all with after this.
DAVIS: Yeah. Although I am glad – and it is worth probably bringing up the notion of Democrats, because I also think, following this election, it’s a little bit like their 2012 moment. I think that the Democratic Party is asking itself, who are we? What do we stand for? How do we win again? And Trump might benefit from having an opposition party that is trying to find its own North Star right now.
GONYEA: I think you’re right.
LIASSON: Yeah, that’s for another podcast, obviously…
DAVIS: Yeah.
LIASSON: …But it was a profound loss, but it was a sweep, not a wave. He didn’t have a lot of coattails. That tells you something about how unique he is.
GONYEA: And whatever they come up with, I suspect they won’t call it an autopsy.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIS: All right, we’ll leave it there, and we’ll have more of that conversation, I’m sure, in 2025. I’m Susan Davis. I cover politics.
GONYEA: I’m Don Gonyea, national political correspondent.
LIASSON: And I’m Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.
DAVIS: And thanks for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
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