A YEAR after Donald Trump became the Republicans’ de facto leader, there is a growing view that the party has succumbed to his nationalist populism. As proof, many cite the race-baiting campaign Ed Gillespie, formerly a plain-vanilla Reaganite, ran in the Virginia gubernatorial contest. That many moderate Republicans are fleeing Congress looks like another clue; announcing his retirement, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona said he could not face making the ideological and moral compromises that stumping for the party of Trump entails. In a forthcoming book, George W. Bush expresses a fear that he will turn out to have been “the last Republican president”, so utterly is Mr Trump unmooring his party from its conservative internationalist principles.
This is to some degree understandable. America’s political history is replete with outsiders, from Theodore Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter, who have tried to reorientate their parties, much as Mr Trump is now doing. He also has some advantages for...Continue reading
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