President Trump suffered a stinging blow after his longtime crony and former personal attorney pleaded guilty to 8 felony counts and his former campaign manager was convicted of 8 counts of financial crimes. This brings to five the number of former Trump campaign associates guilty of criminal behavior. Michael Flynn, Richard Gates and George Papadopoulos were charged and pled guilty. Who knew this is what the president meant when he said he would drain the swamp?
Michael Cohen, his “fixer”, pled guilty to eight charges including campaign finance violations. Then he went rogue by directly implicating Trump in paying “hush money” to the president’s paramours in a blatant attempt to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.
Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chairman, was convicted on eight charges of bank and tax fraud. The dual courtroom spectacles are widely seen as harbingers of presidential legal jeopardy yet to come. More and more, under the president’s leadership, the Republican Party is starting to look like a criminal enterprise.
Nonetheless, the president remains oblivious. He is ramping up his political travel ahead of the midterm election. As he zeros in on the midterm he has made it abundantly clear that he is not concerned about blow back from the convictions of his confederates. What he is concerned about is immigration. The president is making immigration the central theme of this off year election cycle. By recycling the anti-immigrant attacks that animated his base in 2016, he hopes to reinvigorate enough of them to carry the day in November. Using “trumped up,” pardon the pun, immigration facts as a “base stimulator” is not only divisive but it’s wrong minded.
Normally, newly elected presidents, from either party, assume their lofty perch, promising to expand the party base beyond its most loyal voters. However, one of Trump’s idiosyncrasies is his seeming lack of interest in growing the Republican Party. From where I sit, this is astonishing. Membership in the Republican Party has been flagging for more than a decade. You would think the party that lost the popular vote by almost 3 million and carried key electoral-college states by less than 100,000 votes would be hell-bent on growing the Republican Party.
The most notable evidence of overall Republican brand erosion is the growing share of Republicans who have jettisoned their party affiliation to join the Independent ranks. A December 2017 Gallup poll found that the percentage of Americans who consider themselves Republican or lean that way has dropped since Donald Trump was elected president. From November 2016 through November 2017, the percentage of people who identify as or lean Republican has fallen 5 points to 37 percent. The percentage of voters identifying as Democratic has remained constant at 44 percent.
For Republicans, party identification took a sharp drop at the end of George W. Bush’s second term and never really recovered. The trend seems to have taken another drop after Trump’s election. For the Democrats, party identification peaked in Obama’s first term and then dropped in his second term.
By way of background, in 2008, when the Republican Anti-Obama offensive commenced, 33% of Americans identified as Democrats, 30% as independents and 29% as Republicans. Then, it was pretty much an even split. Since then, the percentage of independents has increased nine points and 6% of the Republican Party has bolted. These downturns point to a lackluster performance by the GOP brand and amplify the magnitude of the Cohen and Manafort convictions. This should arouse substantial Republican concern, but I don’t see it. It’s like Trump has been given free rein to preside over the demise of the Republican Party.
The rise in the number of Republican defections has been particularly dramatic since the GOP controlled congress and Republican leadership decided to forsake governing to follow President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. From the results of recent polls, the Republican Party may want to consider returning to work and think again before making the immigration policy of ripping families apart the showpiece of the midterm campaign.
From the beginning of the Trump administration, the oldest Americans, those aged 50 and over, have consistently given Trump his highest approval ratings while young people, those aged 18–29, have consistently given him his lowest approval ratings. But, how can an older, whiter and less flexible right-wing GOP build a conservative party if 77% of America doesn’t seem inclined to buy into the Trump brand of conservatism? A political party that can’t attract young people doesn’t seem to me to be a party with a bright future.
We can no longer pretend that President Trump doesn’t own the Republican Party. Therefore, we shouldn’t underestimate his ability to generate a hefty level of blind partisanship support. But, we also know voters don’t switch parties easily. Switching partisan identity is much more central to our identity, therefore, much more difficult. Moderate Republicans didn’t leave the party as it moved rightward because they wanted to. They switched because they believed they had to. Their ideology was far more flexible than their principles.
When I was in the Administration of Ronald Reagan, we were the party of the big-tent with room for everyone. Then, in the era of Obama, we morphed into the party of “no.” Now, we are the party of the pup tent with room for only a few. As GOP candidates try desperately to pull voters to the far right Reaganism remains the party’s ideological guiding star. Republicans hope to win by preaching Reaganism to get elected and then hoping to practice “Trumpism” once in office.
Currently, there is no heir apparent to Trumpism, but that isn’t to say that the GOP can separate itself from Trump. The party’s embrace of a man so open in his racism, sexism, and xenophobia will be a millstone around the neck of the party for a generation. We have an opportunity in November. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Vote.
Ricardo Inzunza, a native of San Diego, California, was appointed Deputy Commissioner of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service by President Ronald Reagan. During his 8-year tenure, his office was the central source for the development, implementation and oversight of all immigration service policies and practices. Now as CEO of RIA International, Ltd, Ricardo is often asked to serve as a business consultant to clients such as the World Bank and the Peoples Republic of China. He can be contacted at riatria@aol.com or 202 664 3274.