As Donald Trump’s flailing campaign for a second term in the White House lurches to its conclusion, I do wonder what is to become now of America’s two-party system.
Trump has hijacked the national Republican Party. After he is gone, what will the silent remnant of the old Republican Party, both in Tennessee and across the nation, do next. Will they rouse themselves in the next phase?
Trump’s self-centered assault on our American norms, so far, has been bolstered by two phenomena:
-
Trump’s own public behavior that so reliably triggers his angrybase of zealous followers
-
The determined silence of almost every mainstream Republican in what we used to know as the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Taft, Baker and Reagan
Party elders might have countered Trump’s reckless words and extremism when they had so many chances to do so, but did not.
Fortunately for the rest for the country, I feel that some of this fetid phenomenon is dissipating now.
Tennessee supports Donald Trump. The rest of America should too and elect him president.
GOP elders remember the days that Republicans and Democrats led Tennessee
Over the past couple of weeks, since the day President Joe Biden bowed out of the race, yielding to Vice President Kamala Harris, I have been talking with a dozen or so old friends whom I know to be life-long Republicans.
These are not in the MAGA crowd, far from it, but are what I call “Traditional Republicans” – and, long reliably, some of the stalwarts of Tennessee’s old, pre-Trump GOP. They are wise souls, and in candor they invariably lament the Trump effect on the nation’s politics.
From these, you hear frequent mentions how Tennessee’s longer political tradition – like the nation’s – has been characterized by elected leaders of both parties.
They name the names of Senators Howard Baker, Bill Brock, Albert Gore (Sr. and Jr.), Fred Thompson, Bob Corker, Bill Frist, and the Govs. Winfield Dunn, Lamar Alexander, Ned McWherter, Phil Bredesen, and Bill Haslam. (Notice how this list includes Democrats as well as Republicans, not just one party or the other.) In each case, competition made for stronger candidates and better government.
In the larger national context, it is essential now to see this current contest for the White House as not just one more election. It’s a chance for Americans to save their democracy as we’ve known it – and after that for mainstream Republicans of the pre-Trump variety to help restore a vibrant two-party system for another day.
The pendulum of history swings both ways – in the United States and Tennessee
Here in Tennessee, which has never been one of the closely media-watched “battleground states” in national elections, the benefits of a two-party system have been manifest over the past half-century (though at present not so much).
For most of that long period, state administrations in Tennessee have alternated their time in power. Neither party ever surrendered it easily, but rather fought hard to win it back next chance they had.
The pendulum of history swings both ways, even here. Tennessee’s political history over this past half-century shows that. The trouble, as now on our Capitol Hill, comes when the pendulum gets struck on one extreme.
A pivotal Trump maneuver has been to systematically absorb – and hold hostage – the mainstream national Republican Party. Now there is no national Republican Party policy platform outside of Trump’s personal preferences. Examples of this abound – from abortion and immigration policies to Trump’s wreckage of America’s global alliances.
Will the mainstream Republicans we have known find their voice once Trump loses? Will they insist on a reversal of this recent bizarre spasm of personality-based electioneering.
Will they insist on a post-Trump revival of America’s two-party tradition that once helped make our states and nation strong?
Keel Hunt is the author of three books on Tennessee’s political history.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Republicans in Tennessee must speak up after Trump loses 2024 election