Today’s Republican Party and the “conservative” movement belong to Donald Trump. They are an extension of his mind, character, emotions, personality, desires, and impulses. This means that Trump’s character failings, apparent emotional and psychological unwellness and challenged intellect are theirs as well.
Donald Trump, convicted of 34 felonies, believes that he is above the law. Once the party of “law and order,” today’s GOP is a de facto political crime organization Trump is the boss.
He is manifestly corrupt. Today’s Republican Party is now a practical extension of his business and brand. Like other autocrats and dictators, Trump has installed a relative, Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, as co-chair of the Republican National Committee as a way of solidifying his control over it.
Donald Trump is an aspiring dictator who attempted a violent coup on Jan. 6—an attempt to end America’s multiracial democracy which has not stopped, and in many ways is accelerating. The Republican Party claims to have a monopoly on “patriotism” and “real American values” but is now complicit with and supports the MAGA movement’s attempts to end democracy — which include support for political violence as a way of getting and keeping power.
He has shown himself, repeatedly, to be a racist, a white supremacist, and a misogynist. In the post-civil rights era, the Republican Party and the “conservative” movement have long shared those values. The rise of Trump has only amplified and emboldened such values and behavior.
Donald Trump is an egomaniac who believes he is a martyr-prophet-warrior who is on a mission from God to become the country’s first dictator. This is part of a much larger pattern of delusional and unhinged behavior, which includes habitual lying and other fantastical claims and thinking. In turn, the Republican Party and its propagandists amplify these lies as facts as part of a strategic disinformation propaganda program.
In the most basic and obvious example of how Donald Trump and the Republican Party are now basically one and the same thing, the party’s platform has almost literally been rewritten to be “whatever Donald Trump wants he gets.” In all, today’s Republican Party and “conservative” movement are a personality cult with Donald Trump as the cult leader. Political personality cults are one of the defining features of autocratic and authoritarian systems of government and society.
Recent research by political scientists Benjamin E. Goldsmith and Lars J. K. Moen explores why so many Americans are attracted to the Trump political personality cult and his MAGA fake populist authoritarian movement:
What is different about Trump that has allowed him such success where others have failed?
Support from a “personality cult”—something his would-be successors lack—has, we believe, been essential for Trump’s political success. In new research, we argue that there is an identifiable hard core of extremely loyal Trump supporters that comprise his personality cult. Members of such a cult show unquestioning loyalty to a strong leader, such as Argentina’s Juan and Eva Perón or Italy’s Benito Mussolini, whom they perceive as infallible and truthful. Their devotion has religious parallels as they consider their leader a savior with unique ability to protect society against internal or external threats. Trump has himself embraced such a status in relation to his followers in statements such as “I am your voice” and “I alone can fix it,” both of which he declared at the 2016 Republican convention.
Trump’s followers are often referred to as a personality cult. Republican former representative Liz Cheney lamented that her party had “embraced Donald Trump [and] embraced his cult of personality” after her 2022 defeat by a Trump-backed candidate. Mainstream news media often refer to the idea of a personality cult in connection with Trump, but until now there has been little discussion of the idea by political scientists.
Personality cults are commonly associated with authoritarian systems, where a strong leader sits atop a regime with strict control of public information. It may therefore seem surprising to find this level of loyalty to a former president in the U.S. However, we identify a group of cultlike Trump followers by their loyalty and personality characteristics. We suggest that commanding such a personality cult lets Trump succeed, where other U.S. right-wing populists fail.
Goldsmith and Moen continue, “Devoted support for Trump demonstrates how political behavior need not be based on policy preferences or ideology. It might instead be motivated by psychological needs found in individuals seeking the guidance of strong leadership. Loyal Trump supporters put their faith in a strong leader they believe can effectively solve problems and save their country from internal and external threats. They find assurance in a leader boasting ‘I alone can fix it.’ We suggest Trump’s political success springs from this psychological wellspring.”
Ultimately, a political personality cult can be both a powerful advantage as well as a great vulnerability and weakness in terms of taking political power.
In 2016, Donald Trump through the force of his personality and brand, timing, a compliant and enabling news media, white racial resentment and outright racism among white “working class” voters, and other deciding factors (most notably the help of hostile foreign actors) was able to defeat Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. Many of the establishment Republicans and conservative leadership saw Trump as a tool they could use to get even more power in a country that is increasingly hostile to their policies. Instead, Trump and his MAGA movement would absorb the Republican Party and conservative movement. There was little to no resistance; The coupling was consensual and very welcome.
Eight years later, after a coup attempt, a disastrous handling of the COVID pandemic, malignant normality, near economic collapse, and general chaos the American people are exhausted by it all. Instead of being new and novel, Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are now a known commodity and stagnant. Public opinion polls and other data show that Donald Trump has not grown his base of support (some measures show that the MAGA movement and Trump have become increasingly unpopular over the last four years if not longer).
Even with those liabilities and an increasingly bored and disinterested public, Donald Trump was well on his way to defeating President Biden in what could have been a landslide. His political fortunes would quickly change, however. President Biden made the honorable and selfless decision to step aside and to pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. In the month since that decision, Kamala Harris (and now her vice-presidential running-mate Tim Walz) would catch up with Trump in the polls. Harris now leads or is tied with Trump both nationally and in the key battleground states. Moreover, Kamala Harris has more avenues to victory in the Electoral College than Donald Trump.
If these early polling trends continue (and assuming they are accurate) the 2024 election could be a landslide victory for Harris-Walz and the Democrats. In a reversal of 2016, it appears that it is increasingly Donald Trump and the Republicans who will have snatched defeat from the mouth of victory.
To say that Donald Trump is not taking this change of political events and momentum well would be an understatement to the extreme.
At his MAGA political rally-cult meetings, and in interviews and other communications, Donald Trump and his surrogates are attacking Vice President Harris with some of the ugliest old-fashioned and naked white supremacy, racism, and misogyny. Trump’s surrogates are also making vile statements and suggestions about her past intimate and dating life in an attempt to impugn her character and dignity. Trump has also made antisemitic attacks on Harris’s husband Douglas Emhoff. It has been reported that Donald Trump calls Harris a “bitch” in private—and has done so repeatedly. Trump and his propagandists across the right-wing hate media echo chamber are also dragging out the old Cold War era-slur that Kamala Harris is a “communist.” Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn would be very proud of Donald Trump’s twenty-first century red baiting.
During his speeches, interviews, and in his posts online Trump appears to be increasingly detached from reality as he makes bizarre claims about fake crowds, fake polls, and continues with his obsessions about electricity, sharks, and the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter.
The thought that a Black woman who is a former prosecutor and attorney general is defeating him in the polls appears to have caused Donald Trump to suffer an extreme narcissistic injury. The fact that his attacks on Kamala Harris have not found traction with the public and may have actually backfired is undoubtedly contributing to Trump’s frustration and rage.
Senior members of the Republican Party are pleading with Donald Trump to stay on message about the economy, Harris’s role in the Biden administration, and other issues that they believe can bring them victory on Election Day. Leading Republican pollsters and influentials such as Frank Luntz are warning that Donald Trump’s behavior and response to Vice President Harris’s energized campaign is a loser and “political suicide.” On NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is one of the corrupt ex-president’s supplicants, warned that “President Trump can win this election. His policies are good for America and if you have a policy debate for President, he wins. Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.”
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It is being reported that Donald Trump is attacking (and firing) his campaign staff instead of listening to their counsel. Donald Trump is incapable of change. President Biden is no longer the nominee. The Republican Party Trump personality cult is showing its weakness and inability to pivot and adapt to the new reality on the ground. They are yoked to him.
By comparison, the Democratic Party is not a personality cult. If anything, it tends toward the other extreme, being undisciplined in terms of messaging and organizing. In all, the Democrats are a coalition that a senior political strategist told me was like trying to organize a bag of cats. By comparison, the Republicans are part of a right-wing movement that operates lockstep like a religion where victory is all that matters, and at any cost.
At this week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, something appears to have changed.
Salon’s executive editor Andrew O’Hehir is attending the convention. In a new essay, he writes:
That noise you heard emanating from the United Center on Monday night wasn’t just the exuberant chant of “Lock him up!” that erupted during Hillary Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention — no, technically speaking Clinton did not lead that chant, though she clearly enjoyed it — nor was it the faintly cringe, carefully orchestrated “We love Joe” chant that preceded President Biden’s speech. It wasn’t even the tiny outbreak of discord toward the back of the Florida delegation, a few dozen feet behind my seat, where a few activists unrolled a protest sign in Palestinian flag colors before being vigorously tackled.
No, it was the sound of the Democratic Party’s collective id — a genie squelched and suppressed for so long its very existence seemed apocryphal — escaping from the underground cavern where it’s been trapped for ever so many years. This building, which hosted numerous championship games for the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls, was literally packed to the rafters and bursting with explosive energy on Monday evening, something that never once occurred during the Republican convention a few weeks ago, 80 miles north in Milwaukee.
Whether or not “Lock him up!” was entirely spontaneous, it felt entirely genuine: To be specific, it felt like a genuine desire for payback, a longing for revenge for the many large and small injuries inflicted on liberal vanity, the liberal conscience and cherished liberal certainties by the Trump movement over the last eight or nine years…. [W]hat’s suddenly tangible at this convention is not just a desire to win, but a longing to crush the opposition into dust. That won’t quite happen, of course, but that brand of GOP-branded hunger is something new for Democrats.
What comes next?
Vice President Harris is enjoying one of the longest political honeymoons in modern American political history. It will inevitably end. There are seventy or so days until Election Day and much hard work is to be done. Contrary to the momentum and “vibes,” the 2024 election will likely be a very close one.
Donald Trump is a great man of history. This is an observation based on how he has changed the arc of American and world history. It is not a normative claim about Trump’s behavior or politics.
Thus, the irony. Donald Trump, being such a man, and in control of a personality cult in the form of the Republican Party, exerts such an inescapable force that it may have doomed them to defeat in the 2024 Election and perhaps beyond.
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