Most Republicans aren’t Nazis. Most Republicans aren’t white supremacists. Most Republicans aren’t racist, sexist, or xenophobic. But a portion of them are, and that faction of the party now seems to be driving the bus. Donald Trump winning the presidency represents more than a victory for populism. It also represents something far more sinister. President Trump is the ultimate victory for the alt-right and the final defeat for moderates.
Moderate Republicans have been at war with hard-line conservative wings of the party (first the Tea Party and now the alt-right) since 2010 when Tea Party candidates swept through the House of Representatives. Moderates claimed a victory, albeit an ultimately inconsequential one, in 2012 when Mitt Romney won the presidential nomination. In 2016, the death knell finally sounded. Now that Trump has won, any hopes of moderates taking back control of the party have been dashed.
The message from numerous Trump supporters, especially ones on the alt-right, has been clear since Trump winning the nomination became inevitable: if you don’t support Trump, you aren’t a true conservative. This message has been relentlessly pounded home on platforms like Breitbart (whose former executive chair is now a chief strategist and Senior Counselor to President-elect Trump) and people like Milo Yiannopoulos on his college tour.
As I mentioned earlier, most Republicans don’t subscribe to racist, homophobic, and white supremacist ideas. But some of the appointments Trump has made dating back to his vice-presidential pick have understandably caused some to believe that such ideas are condoned by the Republican Party.
First, we have his vice president, Mike Pence. When it was announced that Trump would be running with Indiana’s Republican governor Mike Pence, he was praised by many on the right for picking a smart, insider politician to help him navigate Washington who also happened to be a gung-ho conservative. However, his record with LGBT issues is very frightening. In a speech given in 2006, Mike Pence said that gay couples signaled societal collapse saying, “societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.” He also opposed the repealing of the long-standing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” rule in the military which didn’t allow soldiers to be openly gay. His shutdown of needle exchange programs is widely blamed for the AIDS epidemic in southern Indiana and while running for congress in 2000, he wrote on his website that he wanted to use money from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and give it to organizations “which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” In other words, conversion therapy.
Then there’s Steve Bannon. Before joining the Trump campaign, Steve Bannon was the executive chair of Breitbart, a web-based conservative news outlet. Bannon has described his outlet as a “mouthpiece for the alt-right,” which is troubling in and of itself, but he also faces accusations of anti-Semitism. In a court declaration, Bannon’s ex-wife said that when touring schools, Bannon “went on to say the biggest problem he had with Archer is the number of Jews that attend. He said that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiney brats’ and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.” According to Ben Shapiro, who worked with Bannon at Breitbart before moving to The Daily Wire, Bannon allowed white supremacists to hijack the website, saying Steve Bannon’s Breitbart “Openly Embraced The White Supremacist Alt-Right,” citing how prominent Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos pushed an agenda “justifying white ethno-nationalism as a proper response to political correctness.”
It almost doesn’t matter whether Trump himself is a racist or a bigot himself. The fact of the matter is that he is surrounding himself with some truly ghoulish figures which should frighten anyone, regardless of leanings. As Stephen Moore said, the Republican Party is no longer Ronald Reagan’s conservative party, it’s Donald Trump’s populist party. Because of this, a lot of Republicans are asking, now what?
Since most Republicans in the House and Senate will likely follow Trump into whatever political battle he wages, help will not come from them. In order to find allies who subscribe to their fiscally right and socially left positions, moderate Republicans may actually be more likely to find support from moderate Democrats. Democrats like Tim Ryan of Ohio and Jason Kander of Missouri who are cut from the Bill Clinton New Democrat cloth appear far more likely to defend their positions than Republicans who position themselves ever-closer to Donald Trump. As tough as it may be to swallow at first, the answer to the moderate Republican problem may not be on the right, but on the left.
