August 23, 2018 | Since the beginning of the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaigns nearly four years ago, no shortage of arguments lambasting the Republican Party for its apparent tolerance of Donald Trump have been made. What first seemed like a joke to many, Trump’s political career has now altered the brand and substance of the GOP. While many respectable political scientists were discussing the Republican problem well before 2016, debating the how and why of the GOP’s current state is, quite frankly, too little, too late. Our reality is that the Republican Party supports Trump through and through, and that will not change.

August 21, 2018—perhaps the most turbulent news day yet for the president—may yet be a tipping point for U.S. politics, however. This is not because Republicans are beginning to rebuke their own president, though a number of conservatives have tepidly done so in the light of Michael Cohen’s and Paul Manafort’s respective headlines. Rather, the Democrats and any entity that claims resistance to the cancer that the GOP has become must use the events of August 21 as a war drum against the Republican Party in the looming midterm elections.

It might seem tired to call for war drums, given the steady barrage of vitriol Trump has faced since he clinched the presidency. What most do not realize, however, is that deep, structural aspects of the game have changed as of two days ago—and only to Trump’s severe detriment.

Manafort’s conviction and especially Cohen’s guilty plea now bring the legal spotlight dangerously close to Trump. This is critical not just because voters generally view potentially criminal presidents poorly, but in the context of how the GOP has rebranded itself in the last 20 years and particularly in the last eight.

If any lesson should be drawn from contemporary U.S. politics, it is that fear is the staple of the Republican Party.

Fear is a powerful political tool. The GOP is not the first political entity to utilize it, though the party was using it long before Trump. The GOP’s remarkable ability to inspire consistent voter turnout in elections, particularly in crucial swing states, is by motivating voters through fear. Combined with smart electoral strategy and a healthy dose of district manipulation—gerrymandering, often to the detriment of marginalized communities—the GOP is very good at winning with a platform of fear.

Trump’s alteration of the GOP in recent years is just taking the traditional fear-based brand into an extreme direction. The president’s authoritarian rhetoric and policies show this; he’s built a narrative around being tough on crime and having a strong state. This appeals to voters who feel threatened with the turbulent and globalized twenty-first century.