Now, five weeks after our presidential election, there remains much tension and some confusion about our political situation and the destiny of our political order. No prospect is more unclear than the future of the Republican Party, and the impact of the Trump Presidency and persona weighs heavily into any related calculation. The myriad campaign lawsuits to influence the election outcome, the Paxton/Trump comic Supreme Court juggernaut, and the choir of sycophantic Republican voices--including the Gang of 106 who back the Paxton and the Trumpian assault on democratic processes--suggest the rot is much deeper than most people could have imagined. While the possibility of Democrats winning both of Georgia’s U. S. Senate seats on January 5, currently held by two leading Trumpian fawners, is unlikely, there has been long term damage to the Republican Party in Georgia and in the nation. The culprit is President Donald Trump and his band of enablers.
As a political science professor for three decades and a Republican, the slow decline of the Republican Party, not to mention the diminishing role of political parties in our politics more generally, have been a great concern to me. The Founders were of two minds in regards to political parties, considering parties as little more than “factions” and sources of political corruption on one hand, but on the other hand, as James Madison noted, parties are also “natural to most political societies.”
When my students visit Europe or other parts of the world on study abroad trips, they often return to regale me with stories of how vital political parties are in the countries they visit, and how they purchased political memorabilia at every stop, and were constantly engaged in political discussions during their travels. Political parties remain vital in Europe, for example, because the only way a person can run for office is to typically be nominated by a political party, and voters are more likely to use a party label to select the representatives in any given election as well.
While our political parties are in decline, our parties are the oldest in the world. As the result of changes in our political culture and the laws and regulations that dictate the work of parties, they are no longer as powerful as our parties were in the past. The rise of celebrity politics also allows previously marginal or disaffected figures to seek political office outside of the normal process of recruitment and selection that was central to the life of our political parties. The slight nostalgia some may experience in persistence of and the eventual election of Joe Biden does not mean the Democratic Party is immune from these challenges as well.
In the Age of Trump, however, no one should be surprised that the Republican Party must now chart a path to recovering their vitality, and the answers are not simple. The sources of renewal can be found some place between the “Never Trump” advocates, who opposed Trump even before he was the Republican candidate in 2016, and the deniers of democracy, including our two senators, who continue to invent evidence of election fraud and urge we Georgia citizens not to vote in the upcoming Senate runoff elections.
For starters, Republicans have to admit that the Trump experiment, to put it delicately, was a failure, and that Trump lost the 2020 election. The Biden Administration has already announced plans to reverse many of Trump’s initiatives, and Trump’s actual successes in domestic and foreign policy were either accidental or of fleeting significance. To make matters worse, Trump, out of his own ignorance and abject narcissism, continued the anti-democratic practice of recent presidents by simply issuing executive orders to exert his political influence. Unfortunately for Trump, a President Biden, or the incoming Congress, or the Federal courts can strike down his executive orders, especially in cases where he exceeded his constitutional powers. Trump, the anti-democrat, will see his policy initiatives undermined very quickly.
With the 2020 election, we can trust Chris Krebs, the technological boy wonder of Bush Administration and Microsoft fame, and Trump’s own Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Krebs was on the mark when he stated that the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history." Krebs’s comments were soon echoed by Attorney General William Barr, Senator Romney and others, with Senate Majority Leader McConnell promising an “orderly transfer” of power. While Krebs truth-telling led to his own Twitter dismissal by Trump, the reality cannot be denied by any honest observer. Sad gatherings led by once-prominent lawyers in our state in the last week, abusing the populist tenor of the contemporary Republican Party’s electorate, and urging Republicans not to vote in the January runoff election, only undermine our faith in elections and democratic practices, and damage Republican electoral prospects now and in the future.
Amidst
the confusion, Republicans can recover from the loss of the White House, but
the process will be painful and require serious engagement with our democratic
principles that Trump has actively undermined.
We must affirm the value of frequent and free elections, and not attempt
to undermine voting. The central value
of a free press, even in our media age that offers a smorgasbord of ideologies
for our choosing, remains a central democratic value. Republicans must aggressively cultivate the authentic
media and seek the truth at all levels instead of sponsoring and abetting
sources of disinformation. In returning
to the traditional Republican “politics of prudence,” as my mentor Russell Kirk
described it, we must serve as the loyal opposition to the incoming Biden
Administration, strengthening local and state party organizations along the way. The time-honored Republican notions of a
strong national defense, budgetary restraint, the free exchange of economic
goods, and the principled diffusion of political power, demand reinvigoration
in the coming years. We also cannot
neglect the recruitment of statesmen instead of celebrities at all levels. If vigilant, the Republican Party can be
renewed, and America needs a vibrant two-party system.
H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
is Professor of Political Science and the former dean at East Georgia State
College, and a Senior Fellow of the Alexander Hamilton Institute. Cheek’s books and other publications can be
viewed at www.drleecheek.net.
