With the end of President Donald Trump’s run as the nation’s pivotal figure in sight (no, he can’t secure a third term), the post-Trump political landscape is beginning to take form. And while Democrats continue to languish, trouble also brews for the GOP’s long-term viability.
First, the Democrats’ woes: On Wednesday, the New York Times detailed the jaw-dropping decline in voter registration for Democrats in all 30 states that track party identification. The report finds that between 2020 and 2024, Democrats lost ground to Republicans among registered voters by 4.5 million, noting steep drops among Hispanics and young voters.
Democrats must be demoralized by having nothing to show for 10 years of raging against Trump. Some persist in the unfortunate belief that it’s just a “messaging problem”; others, such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), think they haven’t raged hard enough. Both camps are delusional.
Democrats have tanked because they oppose policing, borders, and capitalism while supporting climate extremism, unlimited genders, and socialism — all things that make them sound crazy, as Vice President JD Vance rightly pointed out to Laura Ingraham last week. They are only in the national conversation because they make a good punch line, and for their presidential front-runner’s sad Trump impersonation on social media.
Yet the Republican Party’s future is far from secure. Despite booming voter registration, favorable polling among Hispanics and young voters, and a general air of competence, warning signs for the party’s future have emerged recently from within its America First base.
Most troubling is the rise of an illiberal faction obsessed with racial identity, cultural grievances, and capturing institutions to impose its ideological will — traits eerily similar to those of the woke Left.
The Democratic Party alienated millions by embracing the illiberal and irrational ideas of its woke faction. And now, the growing strength of its right-wing counterpart threatens the GOP’s Trump-era electoral gains and risks handing the nation back to the Left on a platter.
Consider Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s apparent endorsement of repealing the right for women to vote. Earlier this month, CNN aired a segment on Pastor Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist and co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. In the video, Wilson explicitly advocates for a patriarchal society that entails the repeal of the 19th Amendment. Other pastors in the video support the idea, with one advocating for household-based voting.
Hegseth, a member of the CREC, retweeted the video on X with the caption, “All of Christ for All of Life.”
Far from a fringe figure, Hegseth is currently among the most powerful men in the country, having flanked the president at the announcement of the Iran strike and the vice president at Union Station. He is often discussed as a key figure in the party’s future, even as a potential vice presidential and presidential nominee. He is rumored to be exploring a Senate bid in his home state of Tennessee. It is no small thing for such a person to endorse such an idea.
Another prominent America First figure, podcaster Tucker Carlson, has recently taken increasingly troubling and politically toxic positions. Carlson, who commands the attention of millions of America First voters, is positioned to influence the post-Trump GOP more than any other figure outside of government.
This makes his fondness for guests who engage in WWII revisionism troubling, especially those who cast the Allies in a negative light and Hitler’s Germany as sympathetic and somehow misunderstood.
Carlson’s recent guests include self-described historian Daryl Cooper, who believes that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of WWII — Carlson introduced him as “the most important popular historian working in the United States today” — and podcaster Candace Owens, who frequently questions the historical narrative surrounding the Holocaust.
Last week, Carlson invited Professor David Collum to the program to discuss WWII, among other things.
Here’s a taste of the conversation:
“I think the story we got about WWII was all wrong,” Collum said.
“I think that’s right,” Carlson replied.
“One can make the argument we should have sided with Hitler and fought Stalin,” he continued. “And maybe there wouldn’t have been a Holocaust.”
Carlson continued the interview, nodding in agreement.
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, another major player in the future of the GOP due to his deep reach into the Trump White House and the broader America First movement, has increasingly embraced divisive and illiberal rhetoric that risks alienating voters.
Kirk’s promotion of the Seven Mountain Mandate, for instance, which calls for Christians to control seven spheres of society (government, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, family, and religion), mirrors the woke Left’s desire for accruing institutional power for the purpose of imposing its ideology. Kirk’s commitment to waging a woke-like identitarian power struggle is apparent in his X feed, which is littered with racialist gibberish. “Whiteness is great. Be proud of who you are,” he wrote in 2023.
In July, following Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, Kirk posted a picture of the Statue of Liberty wearing a burqa with the caption, “24 years ago, a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11. Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.”
More than offensive to those who lost loved ones on Sept. 11, 2001 (approximately 70 Muslims died in the attacks), the attempt to paint Mamdani as the moral equivalent of Osama bin Laden is reckless and politically counterproductive. To be sure, Mamdani espouses some terrible ideas, but he’s not a terrorist. Suggesting he is will send moderates and Trump-friendly liberals darting for the exits.
Further, Mamdani’s supporters are not Islamists but privileged white children in Williamsburg and Park Slope. Kirk’s insinuation that Mamdani represents Muslim radicals plays into the Left’s favorite trope, that anyone who opposes their agenda is a “phobe” of some kind.
Like Hegseth and Carlson, Kirk is no fringe figure but a main character in GOP politics whose star is set to rise even further once Trump leaves the national spotlight. His endorsement will be highly sought after in the upcoming primaries, amplifying his views.
Another dark harbinger is the troubling rise of self-described racist and podcaster Nick Fuentes, whose audience is among the fastest-growing on the Right. Amplified by high-profile engagements with GOP figures such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-WY), Fuentes threatens to normalize toxic ideologies that could fracture the party’s coalition and alienate its newfound moderate and minority supporters.
In time, it’s possible we will regard Trump as having a moderating effect on the GOP. The unrivaled personal loyalty he commands across the party’s factions has allowed him to break orthodoxies and walk his own path, which has been remarkably moderate. To wit: Trump has accepted gay marriage as “settled law” and appointed gay people to key positions in his Cabinet, opposed a national abortion ban and defended access to Mifepristone in court, flexed America’s military might while opposing lengthy wars, protected Social Security and Medicare, and deported a relatively modest number of illegal immigrants despite his bluster.
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Perhaps equally important, Trump’s bombast has been tempered by good humor and optimism. History will not remember the radical authoritarian that the legacy media made him out to be during his reign.
But as Trump exits, real radicals emerge. If the illiberal Right’s ascent continues, the GOP risks mirroring the Democrats’ collapse, squandering its gains with Hispanics, young voters, and moderates. Trump united the party around pragmatic and popular ideas. The leaders poised to replace him appear to have a different agenda altogether.