Donald Trump catalyzed a movement that has destroyed the conventional wisdom – and the establishment – that has led the GOP for a generation

Not long after he launched his rocket of a campaign last summer, Donald Trump walked into a gathering of hardcore conservative activists in Nashville, Tennessee. Meeting a Manhattan businessman with no clear ideological discipline, the crowd could have been skeptical at best and hostile at worst.

The National Federation of Republican Assemblies casts itself as the keeper of the flame of modern conservatives, claiming a big role in the Goldwater and Reagan revolutions that defined the party for a generation. “We are the Republican wing of the Republican party,” the group likes to say.

The group would go on to endorse Ted Cruz, but at the time members happily ignored Trump’s flip-flops on abortion and his lack of religious roots to cheer on his anti-establishment war cry.

“You know, I’m a Republican. I’m a conservative,” he claimed. “But I’m just as angry with the Republicans because they go to Washington, something happens – they become weak … Then they walk into these magnificent buildings with those incredible vaulted ceilings, and they go: ‘Oh, I made it, darling, I made it. I vote for you. I vote for you. I vote for Obamacare expansions. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I’m in Washington.’ It’s amazing. Isn’t it amazing? Don’t you agree? It won’t happen to me, I promise. And if it does, you can let me know about it. But it won’t. I promise. I promise.”

Midway through a rant about “phony statistics” and free trade, Trump spotted a sign in the crowd and stopped in his tracks.

“You know, this is a movement, folks,” he said. “This is not, like, maybe even about me. I don’t want it to be about me. This is about common sense. It’s about doing the right thing.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump answers questions from reporters at the National Federation of Republican Assemblies in Nashville in August 2015. Photograph: Mark Humphrey/AP

As his explosive campaign draws to a close, Trump is claiming once again to lead something even bigger than his own ego. In one of its rare positive commercials, called simply Movement, the Trump campaign mixes scenes of the Republican convention and the new Trump hotel in Washington to claim: “It’s a movement, not a campaign. Its leader, Donald Trump, dreaming big, building bigger.”

Of all the outlandish assertions to emerge from Trump’s mouth, this one is by far the most credible. Win or lose, Trump has catalyzed a movement that has destroyed the conventional wisdom – and the establishment – that has led the Republican party for a generation. Whether he built the movement or simply rode its wave, Trump has profoundly reshaped the politics of the Grand Old Party. From his opposition to trade to his admiration for Putin, from his authoritarian tendencies to his anti-Nato stance, Trump has trampled across several red lines of Republican politics. In many ways, the biggest unknown in American politics is not about the winner of Tuesday’s election; it’s about the future of the Republican party and the power it continues to wield.

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There are several GOP establishment types who believe that Trump’s hold on the GOP is weak. Without any national network of his own, Trump has no loyal hacks holding on to the party apparatus. In that thesis, the party’s leadership – the RNC, congressional officials, major donors, thinktanks and chief strategists – can wrest back control just as soon as Trump shuffles off stage.

Other campaign veterans think that is wishful thinking.

“The sooner we come to terms with the fact that Trump is not going away, the sooner we can confront the very real threat he represents to the profile and long-term prospects of the party,” says Kevin Madden, who served as senior adviser and spokesman for the last Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. Madden says Trump’s tenacity and love of the limelight – as well as his own campaign infrastructure of mailing lists, donors and volunteers – will give him longevity, no matter what happens in the general election.

“I believe two worldviews will emerge amongst Republicans on 9 November,” says Madden. “One worldview will look to replicate the Trump model of defining the party as a vehicle for grievances against the so-called establishment. The other worldview will look to confront the Trump effect on the party, separating the Trump voter from Trump himself, and look to rebuild the party as one of reform, with a real agenda and message that connects with the anxieties and concerns that were on display this year.

“So, yes, it’s reasonable to expect there will be a civil war within the party. If I had to handicap it, I’d even say that Trump and his supporters are winning that battle right now.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supporters cheer for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a campaign event in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

This civil war has been a long time coming.

Trump was not the first to understand the potency of immigration as a defining test for the new Republican party. That moment came at a high point of President George W Bush’s power, soon after his re-election in 2004.

At the time, the establishment consensus was clear about the rise of Latino voters. Republicans could not afford to concede them to Democrats, and instead could win them over with an agenda of family values, faith and support for small business.

So when Bush pushed for immigration reform in 2005, he fully expected his political capital to pay dividends. Instead, he found himself outflanked and outgunned by House Republicans and nativist hosts on conservative talk radio. A comprehensive approach died that year and a more limited version was killed two years later, just as the financial crisis was beginning to emerge.

The crash of 2008, and the Great Recession that followed, transformed a political landscape that was already shifting against the pro-business, pro-immigration culture that once represented mainstream Republican opinion.

Steve Schmidt was a senior staffer on Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign and in effect campaign manager of McCain’s 2008 effort as the economy collapsed. He sees the emergence of Trump and Bernie Sanders as part of a far bigger shift in global politics that threatens the security and economic order we have known since the second world war.

“The absolute acquiescence of the Republican establishment, who discarded a generation of conservative ideology at the knees of an authoritarian wannabe, and the fact that someone so manifestly unprepared intellectually, emotionally and morally came this close to achieving real power in this country is a historic event that is truly unprecedented,” says Schmidt.

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“The notion that there’s a snap-back to normal is naive in my view. It has exposed at a really massive level the profound hypocrisy of the Christian right leaders – not good people of deep faith, but the Falwells and Perkins and Robertsons.”

For Schmidt, the decision of those Christian conservative leaders – Jerry Falwell Jr of Liberty University, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson – to support Trump undermines their preaching about family values, given the candidate’s personal conduct and life choices.



He added: “And it has demonstrated the intellectual bankruptcy of the movement – the Republican party of the 80s and 90s as the party of ideas.”



Schmidt sees this election as the second of four global contests fought along the same lines, along with this year’s Brexit vote on EU membership in the UK and next year’s presidential elections in France and federal contests in Germany. Across Europe, and some parts of the world like the Philippines, Schmidt sees the troubling rise of rightwing populism based on blue-collar job losses, stagnating middle class wages, and poor job prospects for the young.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A supporter of Donald Trump holds a sign during a campaign rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

“We’ve seen in this campaign the emergence of this underbelly of American nativism, of white nationalism, the alt-right movement,” he says. “If you have any sense of history it’s not difficult to look at this and be very disturbed by it. There’s always been a question in America of: could it happen here?”

For now, the party’s elected leaders seem dazed and confused about the path forward. Take Jason Chaffetz, the Utah congressman and conservative star, who was disgusted by Trump’s comments about assaulting women just a few short weeks ago. “I’m out,” he told the Washington Post. “I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president.”

Last week he decided he was not totally out, after all. “I will not defend or endorse @realDonaldTrump,” Chaffetz tweeted, “but I am voting for him. HRC is that bad. HRC is bad for the USA.”

This is just the kind of political weakness Trump was lampooning last year. In which case, the future of the party after next week belongs not to the non-endorsers but to the harder-core conservatives supported by groups like FreedomWorks, the Tea Party-fuelled grassroots group promoting a libertarian-style agenda.

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Jason Pye, director of communications, says the group is pinning its hopes on anti-Trump senators like Rand Paul, Ben Sasse and Mike Lee, alongside the House Freedom Caucus that helped oust the last House speaker, John Boehner.

“These guys are the thin red line that protects the constitution from Hillary Clinton,” says Pye. “These are the guys who fight for economic freedom and personal liberty and we’re supporting them.”

That makes at least three Republican splinter groups in the wake of a Trump defeat: the old main street GOP, the libertarian wing, and the diehard Trump loyalists.

For some conservatives, the only silver lining is the age profile of those Trump fans. “The one hope is that all the crazy people in the Republican party are older and the crazy people in the Democratic party are younger,” says Schmidt.

It’s not much to cling to, but it’s all they can do to hope this movement dies of natural causes.