Republicans will win in 2024 if they eschew Trumpian populism and embrace Bush-Cheney conservatism.
Although former President Trump is obviously responsible for the Republican Party’s disastrous and historically unprecedented subpar performance in the 2022 mid-term elections, his diehard defenders and apologists are warning the GOP not to abandon the “populist agenda” that supposedly made Trump, in their view, a successful politician.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham, for instance, credits Trump with energizing and “reinventing the GOP,” while setting it upon the path toward becoming a “multiracial working class party.”
In Ingraham’s view, Trump rejected the “pro-war” and “pro-CCP” (Communist Chinese Party) establishment GOP epitomized by former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and 2008 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Ingraham warns Republicans against reverting back to the establishment’s supposed love for amnesty, open borders, endless wars, and unfair trade with China.
She essentially acknowledges that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee and warns him against being cooped by the dreaded GOP “establishment.”
Of course, this is a badly distorted and self-serving analysis that ignores many inconvenient truths.
For starters, Trump’s supposed political success is far less impressive than Ingraham suggests. The man won one fluke election (in 2016) against a very weak Democratic opponent (Hillary Clinton), and he did it by narrowly winning three states—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—with a large contingent of white working class voters.
Since then, thanks to Trump, the Republicans have been decimated in two of these states (Michigan and Pennsylvania), while barely hanging on in the third (Wisconsin).
Biden won all three states, of course, in 2020; and all three states have Democratic governors who just won election or reelection.
Pennsylvania and Michigan have two Democratic senators; Wisconsin has one. The sole Republican Senator, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, barely won reelection against an extraordinarily weak Democratic opponent.
Dems, meanwhile, flipped both houses of the Michigan state legislature for the first time in nearly four decades, while apparently winning control of the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives.
The bottom line: the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin is in far worse shape, thanks to Trump, than it was seven years ago before he came on the political scene.
Michigan’s reelected Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, would be a very formidable Democratic presidential candidate in 2024. Ditto Pennsylvania’s newly elected governor, Josh Shapiro.
As a result, it is difficult to see how any Republican can win these states in 2024. And without winning at least one of these three states, it is difficult to see how any Republican can win the White House in 2024. The Electoral College math simply does not compute.
George W. Bush. In fact, to win in 2024, the Republicans’ best bet might be to essentially update or tweak what George W. Bush did in the Electoral College when he was elected and reelected president in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
That is, sweep the South and the West, while winning Iowa and New Hampshire, but losing Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia. That would give the Republican presidential candidate 271 Electoral College votes: one more than necessary to win the presidency (see the Electoral College map below).
That, of course, is precisely how Bush won the 2000 presidential election (see the Electoral College map above).
Yet, ironically, Ingraham derides Bush as the exemplar of all that is wrong with the Republican Party: because he was committed, supposedly, to “endless wars,” open borders, and trade with China.
Bush’s Policies. But while the Iraq War may have been a mistake, it was essentially over and won by the time Bush left office in 2008, thanks to “the surge” of U.S. troops and adoption of a winning military strategy.
The war in Afghanistan was still in a low boil, but if he had a third term, Bush almost certainly would have replicated “the surge” in Afghanistan to successfully end the war, or at least make it manageable without an abject American defeat and withdrawal.
It is true that Bush tried to solve the immigration crisis, but it is not true that he was committed to amnesty and open borders.
Unlike Trump, Bush did not support building a wall along the southern border, but remember: Trump himself never really built the wall either. He talked a good game, but failed to deliver. Just ask Ann Coulter.
Bush did try to engage China; but so, too, had every American president, Republican and Democrat, since Richard Nixon. This was a good-faith, decades-long effort that had to change as China’s adversarial posture vis-à-vis the United States became increasingly clear and transparent.
Thus a President Romney or a President McCain would have confronted China, but in a far more effective way than Trump: by better leveraging the strength of our allies in the Pacific—and without the collateral economic damage that resulted from ill-advised tariffs or taxes on American manufacturers and consumers.
Trump’s Policies. Moreover, Trump’s political success, such as it was, resulted from traditional conservative Republican policies, not newfound populist ideas.
Corporate tax reform, for instance, ushered in the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 50 years and the lowest black unemployment rate in recorded history. And energy deregulation resulted in American energy independence for the first time in our nation’s history.
Trump also stopped the flow of illegal immigrants pouring across the U.S.-Mexican border, albeit without the wall or in spite of the wall.
Trump accomplished this belatedly in his administration by finally adopting regulatory reforms, such as a “remain in Mexico” policy for would-be asylum seekers and DACA restrictions, that effectively secured the border.
On the international stage, Trump definitely was not an isolationist or a non-interventionist. He ordered ISIS destroyed and Iranian General Qasem Soleimani killed, and he achieved both of these objectives quickly through the use of American military power.
Bush v. Trump. Yet, despite these policy successes, Trump failed to win a majority of the popular vote in both 2020 and 2016. As David Frum points out:
He lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost the House in 2018. He lost the popular vote and the Electoral College in 2020. He lost the Senate in 2021.
Since 2000, there have been six presidential elections, and thus 12 presidential nominations by the two major parties. In his share of votes cast, Trump finished tenth and 11th out of the 12: behind Mitt Romney, behind John Kerry, behind Al Gore.
In fact, the only Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote in the past 32 years (eight presidential elections) was George W. Bush, in 2004.
So let’s not pretend that Trump achieved unparalleled political success when he clearly did not. And let’s not pretend that he outperformed his Republican predecessors at the ballot box when the facts show otherwise.
In truth, Trump achieved some political and policy success by forthrightly addressing, or trying to address, new problems that had arisen in the new millennium.
For the most part, he adopted traditional conservative policies that proved successful. When, on occasion, Trump deviated from these conservative policies to embrace Ingraham’s preferred populist positions, he was far less successful.
Trade is a good example. As Douglas A. Irwin explains, Trump’s ill-advised tariffs increased the trade deficit; eliminated tens of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs; reduced household incomes; and were a drag on economic growth.
“Numerous studies, add Jeb Hensarling, the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2013-19), “have shown that almost all the costs of tariffs initiated under the Trump administration were paid by American consumers and businesses.”
Conservatism, Not Populism. The truth is Trump’s political success has little to do with populism and everything to do with conservatism.
Populism, in fact, got Trump in trouble. Jan. 6 populism, for instance, was an unmitigated disaster. It haunted Republican candidates nationwide in the 2022 mid-terms, while destroying whatever chance Trump had to win a second term in 2024.
Ingraham, then, has it precisely backwards. The danger for Gov. DeSantis and the Republican Party is that they try to ape Trump’s populism while giving short shrift to the conservative policies that actually proved successful, substantively and politically, for Trump.
Conclusion. In other words, contra Ingraham, we need a more conservative and less populist Republican Party.
We need a Republican Party that applies tried-and-true conservative principles to modern-day problems. We need a Republican Party that believes in markets, American military power, and parental sovereignty and choice.
Therein lies public policy success. Therein lies political victory—in 2024 and beyond. Populism is a mirage that will only lead Republicans astray down the primrose path to defeat and permanent minority status.
Feature photo credit: the 2000 presidential election Electoral College map, courtesy of 270ToWin.com.