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When he emerged on the political scene, Donald Trump lit a fire under Republicans at a moment when they were desperate for a win. With the knack of a con man, he realized that the GOP’s right-wing base was ready to ignite. 

Millions of voters felt abandoned by their own party and were terrified of the prospect of Hillary Clinton running their country, especially after it had already been run by a Black man. All they needed was a spark. 

Trump was that spark.

From the first moment of his campaign, he showed those who had been cowed into silence by an increasingly multicultural, diverse, and “politically correct society,” that, in his America — it would be OK to be bigots.

He said things in public that GOP voters wanted to hear but Republican politicians were afraid to say.

And, because the media treated Trump like an entertaining and lucrative sideshow, voters heard him say them a lot.

With the fire lit, he fanned the flames of their discontent with an endless stream of lies, grievances, and promises to take back America to an unspecified era of greatness that was understood to be a time when white men ruled and everybody else knew their place.

In hindsight, it almost seems crazy that Republican leaders (and everybody else) didn’t see what was coming next.

After all, the GOP base had made it quite clear for a decade what it wanted.

In 2008, for example, the right-wing of the party was less enthusiastic about Sen. John McCain (AZ), the actual nominee, than his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who served as a prototype for Trump.

When that duo lost to Barack Obama, who won the White House in an actual landslide on the shoulders of a broad coalition of voters who bought into his message of “hope and change,” it looked for a moment as though the GOP would be condemned to the political wilderness for some time.

Then, however, came the moment of the people who would end up forming the backbone of Trump’s success.

The election of a Black president channeled the unhappiness of the base into a passionate right-wing countermovement — the Tea Party — that helped Republicans make sweeping gains in the 2010 midterms, which they immediately used to redraw congressional districts and pass voter-suppression laws in several key states to cement their power.

Still, the GOP failed to recognize where that power came from, and Obama once again prevailed in 2012 when he ran against (and trounced) a couple of RINOs — namely Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who were decidedly not Tea Party favorites.

Throughout that primary, Republican voters had tried to send a clear message to their party: We want anybody but Romney, who seemed to be a traditional conservative presidential nominee straight out of central casting. He looked the part, came from a political dynasty, was a successful businessman, had shown that he could win in a blue state, and was clearly pious (although not quite for the right team).

The Tea Party types hated him, but they lacked organization, a seat at the establishment table, and a viable challenger they could coalesce around, which is why, at one point or another during that primary, any number of kooks and extremists — like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Herman Cain, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) — looked like possible contenders for the nomination.

In the end, Romney prevailed, in part because several of the above self-combusted.

Still, at that point, everybody should have seen the writing on the wall: The GOP base was fed up with establishment candidates and was looking for a disruptor.

Next thing you know, Trump came down his golden escalator, said a bunch of racist stuff, and, as they say, the rest is history.

However, it remains to be seen whether this story actually has a happy ending for Republicans.

Yes, Trump has won the White House twice and even managed to not lose the popular vote once.

However, those victories have come at a steep price for traditional Republicans because, while they are ostensibly in control of Washington, DC, they are certainly no longer in control of their own party.

Trump and his acolytes are.

In many ways, the Republican Party is dead. Like so many things he touches, Trump has demolished it and replaced it with something more to his liking, i.e., something in his own image.

We can prove it.

Quickly, what does the MAGA GOP stand for?

…

We are waiting.

…

Did you come up with anything that isn’t about advancing Trump’s personal agenda, extremely un-American, or anti-something rather than a positive policy?

We doubt it.

Sure, some of the remnants of the old Republican platform can still be found in this administration’s policies, like tax cuts for the rich and gutting the social safety net.

But that’s also where Trump’s personal interests (and that of the Mar-a-Lago crowd) align with those of the old GOP.

What else?

This administration pretends to be “tough on crime,” but that doesn’t mean all crimes, of course. Not Trump’s own, for example, or those committed on his behalf. And certainly not the crimes of rich people who can pay him for pardons (speaking of which, the modern GOP is certainly not anti-corruption).

Republicans also used to be for free trade and pro-immigration. That’s emphatically no longer the case.

Oh, and remember when they were anti-Russia? Some of those guys still exist in Congress, but they are a dying breed and have learned to keep their mouths shut.

To be fair, there is still an overlap when it comes to “family values.” Both the old GOP and MAGA pay lip service to it while not incorporating the teachings of their religion into any of their policies.

Speaking of policies, that’s really not something Trump Republicans do.

Instead, they are all about grievances (the president’s and their own), conspiracy theories, and lies.

Most of the laws congressional Republicans pass these days are about virtue signaling rather than actually improving the lives of non-billionaires.

For example, the House passed a bunch of bills that basically just affirm laws that are already on the books. That includes legislation making it illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections (it already is) and ensuring that infants born following an unsuccessful abortion receive care (they do).

Other bills passed in the House include the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025, the Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, and a measure sanctioning the International Criminal Court.

All of these things play well with a Fox News-viewing base but don’t really accomplish anything.

And why pass laws when Trump can just rule by executive order? Which, by the way, is also not a style of governing that the old GOP liked… at least not when a Democrat was in the White House

The same applies to “states’ rights.”

Chances are that most Republicans don’t care that they have sold out all of their former policy preferences in exchange for power.

However, what happens when Trump is gone?

While the president seems like a ubiquitous force in US politics and it’s tough to remember a time without him, he is almost 80 years old, overweight, required an MRI for some mysterious reason, and appears to have some sort of gangrene on his hand.

We are not in the camp of those who believe that Trump’s mental disorders and decline are progressing and will ultimately render him unfit for the presidency; instead, we are in the camp of those who believe he was unfit to hold the nation’s highest office in the first place. But either way, he certainly won’t stick around forever — so what happens to his movement then?

Until now, MAGA has been a cult that is controlled almost exclusively by Trump’s personality. While that may seem incomprehensible to those of us who view the president as a cartoonish buffoon, he undeniably has tens of millions of conservatives under his spell.

But whatever this magic is, it is Trump’s alone.

So far, nobody else has been able to wield it to any great effect.

Vice President JD Vance certainly seems to try, but he has the charisma of a car battery.

Take his performance at Turning Point USA’s “AmericaFest” earlier this month where he peddled some basic racist fare, like this gem:

“I got to say, ladies and gentlemen, [the Democrats] are not sending their best. Omar Fateh was Ilhan Omar’s candidate for mayor of Mogadishu, I mean Minneapolis,” Vance said. “Little Freudian slip there.”

This came about five minutes after he claimed the GOP doesn’t care what race people are, and shortly after he delivered the signature line of his address, which was, “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.”

But he can’t pull off bigotry as well as Trump.

Maybe the conference attendees lapped up that not-so-subtle racism, but how is he going to appeal to regular Americans?

This was a problem for almost everybody who spoke.

There’s no plan to make the lives of regular Americans better, just a lot of talk about the country’s “enemies,” who killed Charlie Kirk and are bad people, and a lot of finger-pointing at Democrats.

But they aren’t in power right now, and the Trump administration isn’t delivering on its promise to usher in a golden age for all.

In other words, things aren’t looking good for the GOP. Whatever Trump’s mystique is, it is wearing thin and there is no heir apparent.

There is also no plan to get the country on the right track, in large part because, for the president and the billionaires who surround him, it is on the right track.

We are not usually overly optimistic, and the real question heading into 2026 is whether the midterm elections will be even remotely fair; but if Trump can’t put his authoritarian vision into place by November, the GOP is going to get crushed in the midterm elections. 

And if the economy gets even worse, then the losses that Democrats sustained in the 2010 midterms will pale beside the Republican rout in 2026.

Which brings us back to the fleeting nature of power at a time when the problems of Americans seem too big for anybody to fix.

In 2008, Democrats had everything (well, not the Supreme Court, which turned out to be a real problem): a charismatic president who scored a landslide victory of 10 million votes and a 2-to-1 advantage in the Electoral College, a massive House majority of 257-178, and (briefly) a filibuster-proof 60-40 edge in the Senate.

Two years later, most of that was gone, and Democrats continue to pay the price for that debacle.

Trump, in turn, won by 2.3 million votes but didn’t crack 50 percent; he is now deeply unpopular and the GOP’s House majority is tenuous.

So, while there are those who despair and think that the president and his party have a hammerlock on power, don’t discount the power of disenchanted American voters.

To win going forward, Republicans need to have a figurehead who isn’t Donald Trump and a plan to improve the lives of regular people.

They have neither.

Right now, all they have is an angry old man whose act is wearing thin.

Therefore, right after Christmas and at the cusp of yet another crucial year in American history, we urge you not to despair.

While Trump and his entourage will do whatever they can to cement their power and further entrench their authoritarian vision, the president has never been weaker than he is right now.