The question is, how electable will post Trump Republicans be without his cult of personality to energize the base? It seems likely that without Trump's skill for showmanship, Republican craziness will become a much more serious electoral liability. We may end up seeing something like the Democrats are going through now, where they are trying to appeal to the wider electorate, but the crazy elements of their base form a millstone around their necks.
If the Democrats manage to get their actual even halfway together by the time Trump leaves office, the Republican party might spend many years in the wilderness post-Trump. I expect that Republican elites may have even more trouble purging their parties of madness than the Democrats are.
I can't think of anyone who has successfully moved from "political influencer" into politics proper.
One major problem is that political influencers are "national" figures, whereas - outside of the Presidency - every single elected position in the USA is local. It doesn't matter if you have 30 million loyal followers, if they're spread across the country and thus can't get you elected anywhere; whereas a local politician of no particular repute can win a House seat fairly easily and proceed up the ranks.
Another is that political influencers are encouraged to feed the most "politics-brained" people. Most people do not spend 24/7 on Twitter, and spend most of their time thinking about things besides politics. The people who spend all their time watching The Daily Wire or MSNBC or whatever else tend to be more extreme than those who just tune in briefly for major stories, then tune back out. Influencers, thus, wind up at the relative extremes, and also have a tendency to - in the course of making 100,000 hours of content about politics - have more than a few bad takes that can be used to dismiss them.
A third is that political influencers are basically ideologues, whereas politicians are, in large part, horse traders. Influencers might say "we should do X," which would be good for the country, but is politically just a loser. It's easy to imagine a right-wing influencer shitting on the law in Texas that says you can't buy a new car direct from the manufacturer - it is a bad and stupid law, after all - but it's a lot harder to imagine a Republican politician in Texas doing so. This also goes for a variety of much larger issues, such as abortion, social security, trans rights, immigration, etc.
Actually I've heard conservatives in real life vocally hope for Carlson to run for President. One "very serious intellectual-type" conservative I know actually chastised me with deep hurt in his eyes when I called Carlson a demagogue.
I'd say Carlson would have a decent shot at winning, especially if the Dem candidate was an unlikable woman (a common problem post-Obama).
A Yarvinist-Vance might be more dangerous than Trump. Trump has "instincts," is easily distracted and chickens out, while Yarvin and Vance have deeper ideological plans. I can see a situation in which Vance drops a lot of the silliness (crypo scams, corruption, family nepotism) and ruthlessly pursues a program of tariffs and mass deportations. The other factor to consider is that Vance is so obsequious that we don't really know what he *actually* believes, if anything. Maybe without Trump at the helm, Vance becomes normal again. At the very least I hope there is a gap between his working class rhetoric and his actual policy.
Congress - the Senate in particular - is still comprised of elites and doesn't believe all the dumb conspiracies. They're just completely cowed by Trump's cult of personality. When that is gone, you'll see Congress assert itself more and a (marginally?) smarter policy direction.
No. Since the institution of direct election of senators, the Senate has become nearly as populist as the House. Alice Roosevelt Longworth even pointed this out in her autobiography "Crowded Hours", published 1933. (...and well worth reading for her other pungent observations upon the life and politics of that age.)
Trump's cult of personality influences GOP legislators, because GOP voters will primary them for going against Trump. If the antivaxxers/MAHA types, for example, have enough influence to throw a GOP Congressman out, then they will cow them, whether or not those elites personally believe in antivaxx nonsense or not.
I think it's exceedingly unlikely that Vance will be the successor. That would require Trump to spend almost the entire last year of his term letting Vance...who he considers his unimportant little errand boy...to be the center of attention, not him. There's no way Trump is going to stand for supporting and campaigning for his second in command, and having the spotlight off him.
He won't be able to deal with it psychologically. For one thing, he's barely even going to be able to deal with his term ending. Seeing a guy half his age who he thinks of as unimportant and made by him in the spotlight will be intolerable and we just isn't going to allow it. Trump is well known to throw everyone who works for him under the bus the second he thinks they're getting a little too much attention or glory. Strong men and aspiring dictator types never let their second hand guy succeed them, it basically never happens. If the second hand guy gets too popular, they get jealous and paranoid. This is a standard factor with MOST VPs who run (and probably part of why they're rarely successful), but it will be amplified by 1,000 with Trump.
Vance would have to walk such a ridiculous tightrope to avoid triggering Trump's who threat while ALSO not looking like a whipped little bitch underling to the public...I don't see it happening. If Vance has any popularity in Trump's last term, instead you'll start to see Trump talking shit about him and casting doubts and turning MAGA against him, and then Trump will try to install Ivanka or Jared or just let a primary get fought. I actually think the idea that Trump will support and campaign for Vance is a ridiculous notion. Never going to happen. He'll want Vance out there saying Trump should get a third term, and if he doesn't he'll consider him a traitor and usurper.
So, IMO the chances of GOP chaos and infighting are extremely high starting in 2027 and definitely in 2028.
This is a compelling narrative, but Trump and Elon just made up somehow and maybe Trump is just weird and will actually be ok with Vance succeeding him.
Trump is so weird and schizophrenic and vibes-based I really can’t predict him. Betting on more narcissism is a good bet but idk.
Presidential campaigns go on for a while year or more nowadays. I can't imagine Trump consistently spending the entire last year of his term promoting Vance and helping his campaign. Like you said, he's not capable of being that consistent. One year in Trumpland is like 20 years in anyone else's, and he LOVES being President so much, I think the idea of it ending is going to be almost impossible for him to deal with. He talks about himself and signs off every tweet with "Your President, Donald J. Trump"...he's not going to be able to bear handing it over to Vance I don't think. Now, if he has a major health issue or stroke or something, all bets are off.
I am nearly positive that Trump will have some kind of major health crisis before the end of his term (he will be 82). But I also fully expect his inner circle to lie and obfuscate and hide him away in the WH, possibly coming into conflict with Vance and the Peter Theil wing. The 25th Amendment requires a vote of the department heads of the administration - they will have to decide if they back a diminished Trump or Vance.
I have no idea who to root for, but I suspect the Theil-owned Vance will be worse for America/humanity.
I'm of the opinion that the conspiratorial circles will eat their own via purity tests and spirals of anti-authority belief fairly quickly.
The nature of conspiracy theorists is to be anti-authority. Trump is chaotic and charismatic enough that he seems to have them mostly under control, but I think they'll fracture when he dies. When Republicans are the new authority and most of the nation's problems haven't been solved they'll splinter on a thousand different wacky conspiracies. I think it'll be difficult to get them to vote straight ticket republican on anything.
Have you done a piece on why Stephen Miller thinks an authoritarian government will be an improvement? There must be some rationale for the extremes of Project 2025 - a rationale beyond the objecting to the crazy policies of some Democrat politicians and mobs. My daughter drew a parallel with the Grimm Fairy Tales and their connection to German nationalism. She suggests it's because Miller et al are not deep thinkers and have a superficial, fairy tale, version of what USA will be like once POTUS has enough power. Is there something more? I don't buy the explanation that "those guys hate the USA". We're obviously not in civil war, so why are they saying the USA is at war with itself? What do they get out of that? Anybody who has studied any history knows their policies don't end well.
Bc they're highly narcissist dorks that no one ever liked or respected nearly as much as they believe they should, and they convinced themselves that in a monarchy or authoritarian fascist type state they would be the chosen ones endowed with the power that they believe in their bones they're entitled to and that has been somehow robbed from them.
"But the most likely successor is Vance, who might tone down the corruption, conspiracy theories, and lies, but increase the ethnonationalism and populism."
I'm against ethnonationalism and populism but they are cogent political positions. Corruption and lies are just....bad. Less of them is always better, right?
I don't think less of them is *always* better. If a political system is highly sclerotic or has truly vile laws, "corruption"--which I'll just define as 'breaking the laws because you think doing so may bring you personal gain'--can be (relatively) good. As for populism, some degree of it is needed to prevent elites from becoming completely self-dealing or clueless.
Fair point. The moral action would be to disobey immoral laws, but I don't think that's at all the case with the Trumpian violations of anti corruption and speech norms.
Yes, but pointing out the parallel with similar movements in a *lot* of other countries, none of which are centered specifically what we would call "white" people.
Conspiracy theories are fun and often at least in the ball park of being correct. Even flat Earth reveals how most normie people can't explain why we know the Earth is round without defaulting to "BUT THE GOVERNMENT AGENCY TOOK PHOTOS!"
demonstrating a(n alleged) lack of epistemological soundness =/= “in the ball park of being correct,” the earth isn’t flat, there is no reptile cabal controlling the world, there have not been mass deaths from corona vaccines, the 2020 election was not stolen, the list goes on and on, conspiracy theories rarely have any truth worth the damage they wreck on our trust/information structures
"But the most likely successor is Vance . . . ." I always assumed this, too, until recently when someone pointed out that Trump would love to keep his name in office by having one of his sons succeed him.
Did you ever read "Little Green Men," by Christopher Buckley? It's a about a George Stephanopoulos type Washington insider who gets abducted by aliens (actually a covert government program). He goes public with his story and overnight his audience changes from boring establishment politicos to conspiracy theorists.
People who think Vance won't be that bad should consider that all of Trump's officials, most notably RFK Jr. and Dr Oz, will still be there on January 19, 2029, and will expect to keep their jobs. Indeed, Trump may force Vance to make a pledge to retain his appointees in office in return for an endorsement. If he fires them anyway, he'll kick up massive opposition within the GOP and may be unable to appoint successors if MAGA Republicans join with the Democrats to block his nominees.
The only hope is for an economic blowout due to tariffs, along with a Biden-like public cognitive spiral from Trump that leads to a purging of all these characters and their ideology, much as 2008 led to the memory-holing of everyone involved with GW Bush.
Of course the media backdrop will remain deranged but at least the slate will be wiped clean.
It is sort of amusing. I read center-left commentators and they do talk as if the progressive "groups" are working hard to form an absolutist conspiracy. The only thing they lack for a proper conspiracy theory is being able to keep their mouths shut. And also unable to have any sort of coherent leadership, it's all a mob of many small groups.
Based on your conclusion, it would seem to make some sense to , in the worse-than-optimal case scenario, be prepared to cautiously ally with the goofy if potentially dangerous conspitiards against the hardcore racial nationalists (not that these are purely mutually exclusively groups, I know, but I’m talking about to the extent that the overlap still isn’t completely overwhelming). There are too many obstacles for the conspiritards to act on their delusions substantively in the short term (maybe with the exception of MAHA, at least for now), whereas the radical racialists have actual policies and legislation they can target in a relatively short amount of time via executive actions.
That said, JD Vance is probably an acceptable outcome all things considered. Maybe there’s increased ethnonationalist potency in some respects, but the symbolic effect of family will probably remain significant. I think it will act as a sort of short circuiting mechanism for the effectiveness of ethnic hostility-mongering, where the more based JD acts, the more it cements in peoples’ minds that basedness can come from someone willing to engage in interracial relations. It will almost certainly be demoralizing for the current race influencer crowd on X, and objections can be cast as being based in resentment (again, assuming JD holds a based enough line). Therfore, over time, the equilibrium will tilt away from outright catastrophe as far as relationships with foreigners. Not optimal, but not one-shotting ourselves either.
The question is, how electable will post Trump Republicans be without his cult of personality to energize the base? It seems likely that without Trump's skill for showmanship, Republican craziness will become a much more serious electoral liability. We may end up seeing something like the Democrats are going through now, where they are trying to appeal to the wider electorate, but the crazy elements of their base form a millstone around their necks.
If the Democrats manage to get their actual even halfway together by the time Trump leaves office, the Republican party might spend many years in the wilderness post-Trump. I expect that Republican elites may have even more trouble purging their parties of madness than the Democrats are.
What if Candace, Tucker or Shapiro decide to run for office?
Shapiro would get viciously attacked from the Groyper/Bannon wing.
I can't think of anyone who has successfully moved from "political influencer" into politics proper.
One major problem is that political influencers are "national" figures, whereas - outside of the Presidency - every single elected position in the USA is local. It doesn't matter if you have 30 million loyal followers, if they're spread across the country and thus can't get you elected anywhere; whereas a local politician of no particular repute can win a House seat fairly easily and proceed up the ranks.
Another is that political influencers are encouraged to feed the most "politics-brained" people. Most people do not spend 24/7 on Twitter, and spend most of their time thinking about things besides politics. The people who spend all their time watching The Daily Wire or MSNBC or whatever else tend to be more extreme than those who just tune in briefly for major stories, then tune back out. Influencers, thus, wind up at the relative extremes, and also have a tendency to - in the course of making 100,000 hours of content about politics - have more than a few bad takes that can be used to dismiss them.
A third is that political influencers are basically ideologues, whereas politicians are, in large part, horse traders. Influencers might say "we should do X," which would be good for the country, but is politically just a loser. It's easy to imagine a right-wing influencer shitting on the law in Texas that says you can't buy a new car direct from the manufacturer - it is a bad and stupid law, after all - but it's a lot harder to imagine a Republican politician in Texas doing so. This also goes for a variety of much larger issues, such as abortion, social security, trans rights, immigration, etc.
One of these 3 is not like the other. Little Shapiro was a made man by big money. He was nothing them everything.
Actually I've heard conservatives in real life vocally hope for Carlson to run for President. One "very serious intellectual-type" conservative I know actually chastised me with deep hurt in his eyes when I called Carlson a demagogue.
I'd say Carlson would have a decent shot at winning, especially if the Dem candidate was an unlikable woman (a common problem post-Obama).
I'm not sure. They are all charismatic, but I don't know if any of them can capture the same lightning in the bottle that Trump can.
A Yarvinist-Vance might be more dangerous than Trump. Trump has "instincts," is easily distracted and chickens out, while Yarvin and Vance have deeper ideological plans. I can see a situation in which Vance drops a lot of the silliness (crypo scams, corruption, family nepotism) and ruthlessly pursues a program of tariffs and mass deportations. The other factor to consider is that Vance is so obsequious that we don't really know what he *actually* believes, if anything. Maybe without Trump at the helm, Vance becomes normal again. At the very least I hope there is a gap between his working class rhetoric and his actual policy.
Vance will do Peter Thiel’s bidding after Trump.
AFTER Trump??
He’ll try.
Lucky for us, they have the charisma of wet toilet paper.
Congress - the Senate in particular - is still comprised of elites and doesn't believe all the dumb conspiracies. They're just completely cowed by Trump's cult of personality. When that is gone, you'll see Congress assert itself more and a (marginally?) smarter policy direction.
No. Since the institution of direct election of senators, the Senate has become nearly as populist as the House. Alice Roosevelt Longworth even pointed this out in her autobiography "Crowded Hours", published 1933. (...and well worth reading for her other pungent observations upon the life and politics of that age.)
Trump's cult of personality influences GOP legislators, because GOP voters will primary them for going against Trump. If the antivaxxers/MAHA types, for example, have enough influence to throw a GOP Congressman out, then they will cow them, whether or not those elites personally believe in antivaxx nonsense or not.
I think it's exceedingly unlikely that Vance will be the successor. That would require Trump to spend almost the entire last year of his term letting Vance...who he considers his unimportant little errand boy...to be the center of attention, not him. There's no way Trump is going to stand for supporting and campaigning for his second in command, and having the spotlight off him.
He won't be able to deal with it psychologically. For one thing, he's barely even going to be able to deal with his term ending. Seeing a guy half his age who he thinks of as unimportant and made by him in the spotlight will be intolerable and we just isn't going to allow it. Trump is well known to throw everyone who works for him under the bus the second he thinks they're getting a little too much attention or glory. Strong men and aspiring dictator types never let their second hand guy succeed them, it basically never happens. If the second hand guy gets too popular, they get jealous and paranoid. This is a standard factor with MOST VPs who run (and probably part of why they're rarely successful), but it will be amplified by 1,000 with Trump.
Vance would have to walk such a ridiculous tightrope to avoid triggering Trump's who threat while ALSO not looking like a whipped little bitch underling to the public...I don't see it happening. If Vance has any popularity in Trump's last term, instead you'll start to see Trump talking shit about him and casting doubts and turning MAGA against him, and then Trump will try to install Ivanka or Jared or just let a primary get fought. I actually think the idea that Trump will support and campaign for Vance is a ridiculous notion. Never going to happen. He'll want Vance out there saying Trump should get a third term, and if he doesn't he'll consider him a traitor and usurper.
So, IMO the chances of GOP chaos and infighting are extremely high starting in 2027 and definitely in 2028.
Even IF Vance is the successor (and I think he likely will be) it won't matter.
The base won't come out to vote for him. Many of them secretly (and not so secretly) loathe him.
Edit: my phone autocorrected "Vance" to "Cancer."
Very appropros 😆
This is a compelling narrative, but Trump and Elon just made up somehow and maybe Trump is just weird and will actually be ok with Vance succeeding him.
Trump is so weird and schizophrenic and vibes-based I really can’t predict him. Betting on more narcissism is a good bet but idk.
Presidential campaigns go on for a while year or more nowadays. I can't imagine Trump consistently spending the entire last year of his term promoting Vance and helping his campaign. Like you said, he's not capable of being that consistent. One year in Trumpland is like 20 years in anyone else's, and he LOVES being President so much, I think the idea of it ending is going to be almost impossible for him to deal with. He talks about himself and signs off every tweet with "Your President, Donald J. Trump"...he's not going to be able to bear handing it over to Vance I don't think. Now, if he has a major health issue or stroke or something, all bets are off.
I am nearly positive that Trump will have some kind of major health crisis before the end of his term (he will be 82). But I also fully expect his inner circle to lie and obfuscate and hide him away in the WH, possibly coming into conflict with Vance and the Peter Theil wing. The 25th Amendment requires a vote of the department heads of the administration - they will have to decide if they back a diminished Trump or Vance.
I have no idea who to root for, but I suspect the Theil-owned Vance will be worse for America/humanity.
I'm of the opinion that the conspiratorial circles will eat their own via purity tests and spirals of anti-authority belief fairly quickly.
The nature of conspiracy theorists is to be anti-authority. Trump is chaotic and charismatic enough that he seems to have them mostly under control, but I think they'll fracture when he dies. When Republicans are the new authority and most of the nation's problems haven't been solved they'll splinter on a thousand different wacky conspiracies. I think it'll be difficult to get them to vote straight ticket republican on anything.
Have you done a piece on why Stephen Miller thinks an authoritarian government will be an improvement? There must be some rationale for the extremes of Project 2025 - a rationale beyond the objecting to the crazy policies of some Democrat politicians and mobs. My daughter drew a parallel with the Grimm Fairy Tales and their connection to German nationalism. She suggests it's because Miller et al are not deep thinkers and have a superficial, fairy tale, version of what USA will be like once POTUS has enough power. Is there something more? I don't buy the explanation that "those guys hate the USA". We're obviously not in civil war, so why are they saying the USA is at war with itself? What do they get out of that? Anybody who has studied any history knows their policies don't end well.
Bc they're highly narcissist dorks that no one ever liked or respected nearly as much as they believe they should, and they convinced themselves that in a monarchy or authoritarian fascist type state they would be the chosen ones endowed with the power that they believe in their bones they're entitled to and that has been somehow robbed from them.
"But the most likely successor is Vance, who might tone down the corruption, conspiracy theories, and lies, but increase the ethnonationalism and populism."
I'm against ethnonationalism and populism but they are cogent political positions. Corruption and lies are just....bad. Less of them is always better, right?
I don't think less of them is *always* better. If a political system is highly sclerotic or has truly vile laws, "corruption"--which I'll just define as 'breaking the laws because you think doing so may bring you personal gain'--can be (relatively) good. As for populism, some degree of it is needed to prevent elites from becoming completely self-dealing or clueless.
Fair point. The moral action would be to disobey immoral laws, but I don't think that's at all the case with the Trumpian violations of anti corruption and speech norms.
ethnonationlist. the new term for white supremacist.
Yes, but pointing out the parallel with similar movements in a *lot* of other countries, none of which are centered specifically what we would call "white" people.
seems to be most virulent in white majority countries. UK, Italy, Germany, Australia etc.
Conspiracy theories are fun and often at least in the ball park of being correct. Even flat Earth reveals how most normie people can't explain why we know the Earth is round without defaulting to "BUT THE GOVERNMENT AGENCY TOOK PHOTOS!"
demonstrating a(n alleged) lack of epistemological soundness =/= “in the ball park of being correct,” the earth isn’t flat, there is no reptile cabal controlling the world, there have not been mass deaths from corona vaccines, the 2020 election was not stolen, the list goes on and on, conspiracy theories rarely have any truth worth the damage they wreck on our trust/information structures
"But the most likely successor is Vance . . . ." I always assumed this, too, until recently when someone pointed out that Trump would love to keep his name in office by having one of his sons succeed him.
Did you ever read "Little Green Men," by Christopher Buckley? It's a about a George Stephanopoulos type Washington insider who gets abducted by aliens (actually a covert government program). He goes public with his story and overnight his audience changes from boring establishment politicos to conspiracy theorists.
There’s literally no way this cult of personality survives post Trump. Trump is a singular figure of our time.
People who think Vance won't be that bad should consider that all of Trump's officials, most notably RFK Jr. and Dr Oz, will still be there on January 19, 2029, and will expect to keep their jobs. Indeed, Trump may force Vance to make a pledge to retain his appointees in office in return for an endorsement. If he fires them anyway, he'll kick up massive opposition within the GOP and may be unable to appoint successors if MAGA Republicans join with the Democrats to block his nominees.
The only hope is for an economic blowout due to tariffs, along with a Biden-like public cognitive spiral from Trump that leads to a purging of all these characters and their ideology, much as 2008 led to the memory-holing of everyone involved with GW Bush.
Of course the media backdrop will remain deranged but at least the slate will be wiped clean.
trump has cognitive spirals daily.
It would greatly help if the DNC and their network of federally funded NGOs would stop forming conspiracies.
Just a thought.
It is sort of amusing. I read center-left commentators and they do talk as if the progressive "groups" are working hard to form an absolutist conspiracy. The only thing they lack for a proper conspiracy theory is being able to keep their mouths shut. And also unable to have any sort of coherent leadership, it's all a mob of many small groups.
Based on your conclusion, it would seem to make some sense to , in the worse-than-optimal case scenario, be prepared to cautiously ally with the goofy if potentially dangerous conspitiards against the hardcore racial nationalists (not that these are purely mutually exclusively groups, I know, but I’m talking about to the extent that the overlap still isn’t completely overwhelming). There are too many obstacles for the conspiritards to act on their delusions substantively in the short term (maybe with the exception of MAHA, at least for now), whereas the radical racialists have actual policies and legislation they can target in a relatively short amount of time via executive actions.
That said, JD Vance is probably an acceptable outcome all things considered. Maybe there’s increased ethnonationalist potency in some respects, but the symbolic effect of family will probably remain significant. I think it will act as a sort of short circuiting mechanism for the effectiveness of ethnic hostility-mongering, where the more based JD acts, the more it cements in peoples’ minds that basedness can come from someone willing to engage in interracial relations. It will almost certainly be demoralizing for the current race influencer crowd on X, and objections can be cast as being based in resentment (again, assuming JD holds a based enough line). Therfore, over time, the equilibrium will tilt away from outright catastrophe as far as relationships with foreigners. Not optimal, but not one-shotting ourselves either.