During the last two weeks of 2025 we will post special columns (lists, the year in review, etc.) so this is our final “Words & Phrases” of the year. In thinking about which canard has dominated and distorted coverage of Donald Trump’s first year of autocratic rule, one phenomenon stands out: The myth that there is still something called the “Republican Party.”
The “Republican Party” today most resembles a cult—its members may be properly characterized as Trump idolaters, followers, zealots, sycophants, or devotees—but this assemblage of supplicants lacks not just a concrete policy agenda but all other fundamental elements of a political party.
For starters, an empty political shell based exclusively on fidelity to a decrepit, unhinged autocrat does not qualify as a political “party” (“a group of persons organized for the purpose of directing the policies of a government”). Trump’s congressional allies have no interest in controlling the purse strings or conducting oversight—i.e., the main ways in which Congress advances policy. At the command of Trump, MAGA lawmakers passed just one significant piece of legislation – the big, ugly bill, which several members later denounced while others frantically tried to reverse course or correct their own refusal to include extension of the Obamacare subsidies.
They have no consistent ideology. “States rights”? Well, they rail against federal regulatory overreach, but they condone federal troops’ invasion of U.S. cities. Indiana’s right-wing governor has threatened his own Republican state lawmakers for not capitulating to Trump’s gerrymander demands, just as MAGA Texas Governor Greg Abbott leaned on his state legislators (at Trump’s behest) to pass a redistricting grab that Texas lawmakers disliked. And while the MAGA contingent nominally supports “law and order,” it cheers the pardon of Jan. 6 felons and the dismissal of those who prosecuted them. Invariably, policy inconsistencies (e.g., America First but start a war with Venezuela, fiscal hawkishness but run up the debt) swallow any cogent dogma. The only consistency is subservience to Trump. (Recall that the “party” platform boiled down to “whatever Trump wants.”)
Likewise, unlike normal political parties, the MAGA crew has no minimum standards for membership. Racists, misogynists, xenophobes, conspiracy mongers, criminals, antisemites, insurrectionists, and adjudicated sexual assaulters are all welcome—indeed, they can rise to highest rungs of the party! The days when conservatives ejected the John Birch Society are long gone.
If the current Trump cult lacks the attributes of a “party” it surely bears no resemblance to the Party of Lincoln, the so-called Grand Old Party. (Which is why I try to avoid “GOP” whenever possible.) In 1856, that party’s presidential platform included this:
Resolved: That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in the Federal Constitution are essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions, and that the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the union of the States, must and shall be preserved.
Well, the current gang worships Trump, who declares that Article 2 means he can do whatever he wants. It disdains the creed set forth in the Declaration (“all men are created equal”) in favor of White nationalism. Today’s MAGA sect surely does not subscribe to the 1856 platform nor any subsequent platform that extolled limits on executive power, judicial humility, free markets (vs. crony socialism), clean government, defense of freedom around the world, or opposition to Russian aggression.
Frankly, a group that wants to erase a critical section of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment (birthright citizenship) and strike down the Voting Rights Act, really has no grounds to claim Lincoln as its founding father.
Likewise, the current crowd is about as supportive of free markets as Karl Marx. It condones Trump dictating which company should own Warner Bros., enacting massive unilateral taxes (“tariffs”), stymieing legal immigration, and extracting a cut of chips deals.
No one should think Trump cultists are the inheritors of a party that for decades defended Europe against the “Evil Empire,” helped sustain a rules-based international order, upheld bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements, punished aggressive nations that attacked neighbors with no legal justification, worked cooperatively with neighbors in our hemisphere to stop the influx of narcotics, cracked down on international corruption, and saved millions of lives through PEPFAR.
And certainly, a gang that cheers a president’s retaliation for protected 1st Amendment activity, investigation of political adversaries, pursuit of charitable organizations he dislikes; who resorts to nonstop censorship cannot claim to be members of a party founded on fidelity to the Constitution. (No Republican president would have countenanced dictator-style cultural capture such as taking over an independent arts facility or defacing the White House’s interior and exterior.)
Let’s face it, the current crowd bears no resemblance to the party with a policy legacy that includes such achievements as the Emancipation Proclamation, the post-Civil War amendments, the Land Crant Colleges and Homestead Act, civil service reform, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the National Park system, the first food and drug safety act, the interstate highway system, the EPA, the peaceful integration of Germany at the end of the Cold War, and the Americans With Disabilities Act. Indeed, no doubt Trumpists would condemn all that as part of a “woke,” communist agenda.
Looking at the broader picture, the Republican Party used to conceive of America as a “Shining City on the Hill,” rooted in the belief we were on the side of goodness, decency, and fairness. (That surely was not practiced consistently, but hypocrisy is the compliment vice pays to virtue.) Now, Trump and his flock openly delight in brutality, cruelty, raw exercise of power, bullying, and rudeness.
In short, the Trump cult, headed by a leader who emulates the current leader of Russia’s Evil Empire, has become what the Republican Party used to despise. So, let’s do away with the “Republican Party” label, since the Trumpists have certainly done away with anything resembling a normal political party, let alone one founded on an anti-slavery platform that stood for a coherent conservative ideology (as opposed to one with a reactionary, extreme, and ethno-nationalistic bent).
Trump likes to stamp his name on everything, so why not change the name to the “Trump Party,” and the elephant iconography to his mug shot? At least that would accurately mark the end of the once serious party.
I think two factors fueled this: cult: 1. The triumphant victory of Barack Obama, so white men could not longerr feel superiorl. 2. That women are no longer beholden to men. So two ways of feeling superior, for certain white peplle, pafticuarlu white men, have vanished.
The current Republican Party most resembles the Taliban: a violent cult that tries to intimidate and control everyone, while destroying the best of the civilization.