GOP Mulls its Future

December 2, 2020 Lost Creek Guide Page 9

-Obituaries- The Memo: GOP Mulls its Future After Trump

BY NIALL STANAGE Republicans are mulling what direction their party will take from here, now that it is

GLEN ARDEN YOUNG finally crystal clear President Trump will leave the White House in January. Two big questions dominate. Firstly, what kind of role will Trump himself seek? SecObituary for Glen Arden Correction ondly, is the more populist and nationalist direction he has pursued the right one for the future? “I think it is the biggest question in American politics right now. Does the party con-

Glen Arden Young, 91, of Hudson, Colorado, born in Burlington, Colorado on Novem- tinue down the path of Trump’s worldview or does it recalibrate as a more traditional ber 19th, 1928, passed away, peacefully, at home on October 17th, 2020 conservative party?” said GOP strategist Alex Conant, who worked for Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) 2016 presidential campaign.

Tucker Carlson: Yes, the Election was Rigged Conant, like other Republican figures who spoke to The Hill, said it was too early to answer this fundamental question. for Joe Biden. Here’s How A number of factors are swirling as the GOP casts

How Democrats, Big Tech and the mainstream around for the best way formedia waged an unfair fight in 2020 ward. Trump in the end lost by a By Tucker Carlson | Fox News much more decisive margin

You’ve heard a lot over the past few days about the security of our electronic voting than appeared to be the case machines. This is a real and serious issue, no matter who raises it or who tries to dismiss on election night. Presidentit out of hand as a conspiracy theory. elect Joe Biden defeated Electronic voting is not as secure as traditional hand counting. It never will be as secure. Voters can see this, because it’s obvious, and it makes them nervous. And why wouldn’t it him by about 4 percentage points and 6 million votes nationwide. Biden’s Electoral College win was clear, even if it was decided by somewhat make them nervous? Our leaders have given us every reason not to trust technology. The tighter margins. people now telling us to stop asking questions about voting machines are the same ones Trump is now the first incumbent president since George H.W. Bush in 1992 to lose a who claimed that our phones weren’t listening to us. They lie. We all know that. reelection battle.

Other countries don’t use electronic voting because they know it undermines confi- On the other hand, Trump received around 74 million votes, the highest-ever total for dence in democracy. A system cannot function if no one trusts the vote. That’s true here, a GOP president or nominee. He outperformed the predictions of opinion polls. too, as we’re finding out. Going forward, we need to find out exactly what happened in this Trump may be the most divisive president of modern times with the nation at large but he is by far the most popular Republican in the country with the GOP base. In the most month’s presidential election, no matter how long it takes the investigation to unfold or recent Economist-YouGov poll, conducted Nov. 15-17, 91 percent of Republican voters how much it costs. viewed him favorably and 88 percent approved of his performance in office.

Once we get answers from that investigation, we ought to revert immediately to the tra- Trump might seek another term in the White House in 2024. If he did so and won, he ditional system of voting, the one that served our democracy for hundreds of years. What would be 78 years old at his second inauguration — the same age as Biden now. we’re doing now is not working. That’s an understatement. As of Monday night, the state Even if Trump ultimately decided against such a run, floating the possibility would be of New York still hadn’t managed to count the votes in five House races thanks to mailin voting. That’s a disaster, and we should stop pretending that it’s not. an obvious way to maintain relevance and stay in the national spotlight. It would also freeze much of the rest of the 2024 GOP field. “I just can’t see him walking away,” said one Republican strategist with ties to the

But we also shouldn’t let our focus on voting machines distract us from all that hap- White House. “He loves being the focus of American life.” pened earlier this month. The 2020 presidential election was not fair, and no honest per- Others suggested that the mere fact of his leaving office would significantly diminish son would claim that it was. The system was rigged against one candidate and in favor of Trump’s influence. another, and not in ways that were hidden from view. The immediate direction of the party is “going to be affected by how much influence he The media openly colluded with the Democratic nominees. Joe Biden and Kamala Har ris refused to explain what they would do if they were elected. That’s never happened be still has when he is no longer the most powerful person on earth,” said GOP pollster Whit Ayres. “The dynamics will be very different. We will see how much of a hold he can retain on his supporters when he no longer has the power of the presidency.”fore in any presidential election in American history, but the media allowed them to do it. Trump has changed the party in ways that will not be easily rolled back. His protection-

At the same time, beginning in the spring, Democrats used our public health emer- ism on trade, his hard line on immigration and his general skepticism about multilateral gency for nakedly partisan ends. They punished Trump supporters for trying to gather, institutions — and American military adventuring overseas — all represent significant but they exempted their own activists -- rioters and vandals from Black Lives Matter and breaks with Republican orthodoxy. Antifa -- from the COVID lockdowns entirely. The restrictions they did enforce crushed There is little evidence these changes are unpopular with Republican voters. Trump America’s small businesses, the heart of the Republican Party, while making their own donors fantastically richer. Jeff Bezos alone saw his net worth jump by more than $70 won more electoral votes while losing the presidential race than GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, and his loss was not the blowout the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) suffered to President Obama in 2008. billion during the pandemic. The Republican Party also performed better than expectations in Senate and House

Then, Democrats used the coronavirus to change the system of voting. They vastly in- elections this year, greatly undermining the idea, pushed by Trump’s critics, that he was creased the number of mail-in ballots because they knew their candidates would benefit leading the GOP to electoral ruin. from less secure voting. And they were right. They used the courts to neutralize the Re- “He absolutely has shifted the party, fundamentally, in a good way,” said Brad Blakepublican Party’s single most effective get out the vote operation, which for generations had been the National Rifle Association. Not enough has been written about this, but anyone man, who served on the senior staff in former President George W. Bush’s White House. Blakeman acknowledged, however, that Trump’s fiercely aggressive personal demeanor was ultimately a turn-off to many voters. The most likely next step for the party, he on the ground saw it. Thanks to legal harassment from the left, the NRA played a vastly argued, would be a broadly Trump-like policy agenda tempered by more palatable prereduced role in this election, and that made a huge difference in swing states like Penn- sentation. sylvania and others. “The rhetoric is going to be toned way down, although the need to be aggressive in

But above all, Democrats harnessed the power of Big Tech to win this election. Virtually policy is not a bad thing,” Blakeman said. “Plain speaking is not a bad thing.” all news and all information in the English-speaking world travels through a single com- Speculation is already swirling around possible 2024 GOP presidential contenders, if pany, Google. A huge percentage of our political debates take place on Facebook and TwitTrump does not run. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is often mentioned as a possible inheritor of the Trump ter. If you use technology to censor the ideas that people are allowed to express online, mantle, without the tempestuous personality traits. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki ultimately, you control how the population votes. And that’s exactly what they did. They Haley (R), who also served as U.S. ambassador to the United States under Trump, could rigged the election in front of all of us and nobody did anything about it. appeal both to the Trump wing and more traditional elements in the party. Sen. Josh

This article has been adapted from Tucker Carlson’s opening monologue on the Nov. Hawley (R-Mo.) also has his fans. 23, 2020 edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” But among party strategists, there is concern about a Republican Party that has been remolded in Trump’s image. They worry about a weakening position in the electorallycrucial suburbs of America as much as anything else. “I think the takeaway from this election is that whoever wins the suburbs is going to win the White House for the foreseeable future,” said Conant. “We have divided government because neither party has a consistently winning message in the suburbs — and that is the challenge for Republicans over the next few years.” Ayres noted that Trump had accelerated a shift in which Republicans grow weaker in the suburbs but have an even firmer hold than before on rural areas and small-town America. But, he cautioned, “clearly, trading fast-growing suburbs for slower-growing rural areas is not a good long-term bet.” One thing is for sure. The Trump era will reverberate for a long time within the GOP. And there is no guarantee it will end when he leaves the White House. The Memo: Biden faces tough road on pledge to heal nation Biden under pressure to remove Trump transgender military ban quickly “We will never go back to being the traditional Republican Party, because of the populism that has arisen in America,” said the GOP strategist with White House ties. “They don’t want conventional politicians.” The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on Donald Trump’s presidency.