Jeffrey Blehar writes for National Review Online about a challenge for the Republican Party’s future.
Donald Trump’s political career — at least the one that began in 2015 with his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination — is arguably best described as a series of crisis points, ones he has forever been able to overcome simply because the next, bigger goal was always out there ahead to goad him onward: Redemption was only another trial or election away. You just could not keep this man down. …
… Trump has made fools out of his naysayers, myself very much included, so many times at this point that predicting his political defeat is a mug’s game. (Maybe aliens invade next — the gray ones, I mean, not the Central American ones.) I am instead going to note that these last few weeks have felt like an uncomfortable inflection point, as the right awakens from the daze of Trump’s 2024 reelection and his early flurry of action to realize (1) he has pot-committeed the Republicans to an unpopular economic regime that has only further immiserated the new voters he won over last November; and (2) he will never be on the ballot again: whatever personal electoral appeal he holds disappears with him, leaving behind only the unpopular residue of his policies.
With that awareness comes the most natural instinct of all: bracing and positioning yourself for the aftermath. Why are chattering classes fixated on this question now? I can only speculate — everybody has their own theories as to why the animal spirits of politics bestir themselves — and that is of limited value. But I will note that, as a matter of pure chronology, it wasn’t the Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes interview (and the attendant controversy engulfing the Heritage Foundation) that really triggered these industry-wide agonistes. It was the November election wipeout.
