Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's populist white nationalism will feature strongly in the party's revival by 2020. Credit:Evan Vucci The old jobs aren't coming back. China is shrugging off traditional manufacturing so the plants in America's industrial belt aren't going to be opening again. In any case the robots are arriving to disrupt manufacturing and services alike. The anger of white working-class males, incited by Trump, is bound to simmer angrily at a distrusted woman in the White House imposing background checks for gun buyers and appointing three or four liberal justices to the Supreme Court. After years of decline violent crime is increasing. The cost of Obamacare is rising and will need higher premiums and bigger subsidies. The Congressional Budget Office projects debt to rise from 2.9 to 4.9 per cent of GDP over the decade. The US genius for innovation runs strong but the US system does a lousy job of distributing the gains. Stagnant real wages will feed grievance over immigration and there's little a president can do about it.

The US will continue to be defied – not just by Putin, even by President Duterte​ of the Philippines. North Korea or Syria are problems without solutions, leaving chauvinists to lament the US has never been more powerless. The truth is this catch cry has been thrown at every president since Harry Truman, including Ronald Reagan in his last years. But the US Right stridently insists America is surrounded by enemies. The neo-cons who gave us Iraq and unleashed Islamic State are demanding America prove its greatness with new wars in the Middle East. If Clinton takes office on January 20 she will have been defined as "crooked Hillary" by Republican attacks over emails, the family foundation and paid speeches to Wall Street. Only one voter in three sees her as honest or trustworthy and she may have the lowest approval rating of any victor since polls began. No honeymoon. Little goodwill. Add lashings of misogyny to this toxic atmosphere and all is tailored for a Republican revival, and a revival with strong elements of Tea Party radicalism and Trump's populist white nationalism. As a result the Republican Party of 2020 will be different from that of Reagan, the Bushes and McCain. It will be the party of the white working class, viscerally anti-trade. The party will be as anti-immigrant as right wing European parties like Marine Le Pen's. Nativism and populism will be the glue that holds it together. So, the Trump next time? The challenger who can render Hillary a one-term president like Jimmy Carter or George H. Bush?

Donald Trump Jnr, now 38, or Ivanka Trump, 34, might be tempted. There is Trump's running mate Mike Pence. If they survive there are the vindicated Trump critics like Senator Ted Cruz and House Speaker Paul Ryan. The latter's stand-out policy, as economist Paul Krugman points out, is tax cuts for the rich. But the perfect candidate for new era Republicans may be the junior senator from Arkansas, 39-year-old Tom Cotton who boasts a dream CV, raised on a family farm and with combat service as lieutenant in Iraq and Afghanistan. A potential Trump 2.0: Republican Senator Tom Cotton. Credit:AP He is an extreme ideologue. He helped torpedo immigration reform to the distress of then-Republican speaker John Boehner. He sabotaged criminal justice reform declaring the US suffers not from too many in jail but too few, what he calls "under-incarceration". In 2015 he tried to sabotage negotiations between the Obama administration and Iran by writing to Iran's Ayatollah saying any anti-nuclear agreement would be dishonoured by a future Republican president, breathtaking in undermining the foreign policy of his own country. He supported a short, sharp war against Iran. He wanted to arm Israel with B-52s to help. He received a campaign donation of nearly $1 million from Bill Kristol's Emergency Committee on Israel in fond appreciation.

His slogans make good bumper stickers. "Let 'em rot," for example, is his stand on Guantanamo prisoners. He was described on Salon as "Sarah Palin with a Harvard degree; Ted Cruz with a war record." He has positioned himself to inherit Trump's base, speaking at the nominating convention and refusing to disown him after recent revelations. Post-election Trump is expected to launch a communications network to the right of Fox. Expect Cotton to be its favourite son. Last week Cotton campaigned for Republicans in Iowa, where caucuses every four years start the presidential election process. He speaks directly to the base of the new, emergent Republican Party. His raw inexperience combined with his relish for war elevates him to a level of menace that rivals that of 1964 Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.

Trump might be finished. But another playwright, Bertolt Brecht, warned: "Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again." Bob Carr is a former foreign affairs minister and former NSW premier.