It is a common refrain among establishment Republicans, and often the media, that Donald Trump highjacked the Republican Party and led its base away from its core conservative philosophies with his populist messages.  The truth of the matter is that many party members who previously voted members of the Republican establishment into office were never fully aligned with the establishment’s financial conservatism objectives.

There have always been two types of voters who usually vote Republican. The first group includes the super rich and those of the upper mid-class. They, for the most part, are financial conservatives primarily motivated by policies which protect and maximize their wealth.  The other group is mainly made up of voters who are often more religious, less educated, and less wealthy.  They are primarily motivated by social issues and are intolerant of what they view as government overreach, unless of course it works to their advantage.  They are social conservatives and they make make up the large majority of the Republican base.

For many years financial conservatives, also known as establishment Republicans, ruled GOP in large part because they were the ones who contributed large sums of money to Republican candidates. Those contributions inspired loyalty to the desires of their financial contributors.  However, establishment candidates could not get elected in Republican primaries or general elections without the votes of social conservatives.  To get them on board the establishment politicians had to at least give lip service to social causes.  However, once in office those politicians concentrated most of their legislative efforts on helping their financial backers.

This worked well for many years, even after many Southerns, who were mostly anti federal government, abandoned the Democratic Party and swelled the ranks of the social conservatives in the Republican Party. Still social conservatives continued to help elect establishment Republicans to state and national offices.

However, over time there were signs of discontent in the Republican ranks.  Social conservative voters began to understand that their issues were not being prioritized by the establishment Republicans that they helped elect and that those politicians did not properly represent their financial best interests.  But they were essentially leaderless. Trump decided that filling that void was his road to political power.  

In 2016 he ran for President by emphasizing the issues that were most important to the social conservatives.  He stoked the fears of white voters who were concerned that they would eventually be outnumbered by brown and black people in their own country.  He vowed to build the wall on our southern border and make Mexico pay for it. He promised religious one issue voters that he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe vs. Wade. He pandered to the deplorables who were angered that a black man had been President for the last eight years.  To engage those who hated the federal government he promised to be the most disruptive President in history.

The establishment candidates in Republican primaries who only championed the traditional conservative values of their wealth benefactors never had a chance.  Trump’s appeal to the social conservatives who formed the majority of Republican voters was his key to victory in the primaries. Trump’s unconventional messaging also allowed him to win very slim majorities in key battleground states though he lost the popular vote by seven million ballots. Trump has our antiquated Electoral College system to thank for his term in the White House.

The point I have made throughout is that Trump didn’t win in 2016 by “highjacking’ the Republican Party; far from it.  He simply channeled its zealous, xenophobic, and federal government hating voters who make up the majority of the Republican Party base whose issues had not previously been prioritized by establishment candidates.  That rebellion in the Republican Party was destined to occur sooner or later; Trump simply launched it and made his path to power.

By the way, even after Trump has departed the political scene his takeover of the Republican Party does not bode well for establishment Republicans who have vowed to take back their party. It is no longer “their party”.  How can they possibly reestablish themselves as the leaders of the party now that the majority of Republican voters have come to the realization that they alone have the power to determine who wins future Republican primary elections.  

What we now have is a split in the Republican Party that is as wide as that between Democrats and traditional Republicans.  The question is whether establishment Republicans will vote for the candidates favored by the renegade majority of their party in future general elections in order to try to salvage what they can of their original objectives. Vocal former establishment leaders such as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger vow that they will not, but apparently they don’t speak for other traditional Republicans leaders who are deathly afraid of alienating Trump voters.  It certainly appears that many establishment Republican voters would rather cling to some of the vestiges of their former power than have Democrats run the country. 

Cajun (Rick Guilbeau)