Conservatives have traditionally loathed political dynasties such as the Kennedys and the Clintons. This loathing has extended to Republicans. One reason why Jeb Bush’s campaign crashed and burned is that many conservatives were tired of one family dominating the party.
Now there’s a new dynasty vying for monarchal power and many on the Right will be all too happy to support it. Nevada and South Carolina canceled their 2020 presidential nominating contests and Kansas won’t hold a Caucus. Why? So voters can’t embarrass the President by casting a vote for challengers like Joe Walsh, Marc Sanford, and Bill Weld. Now the President’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale has said the Trumps are “a dynasty” and that their influence “would last for decades.”
Recently Republican Political consultant Rick Wilson had predicted Donald Trump, Jr. would run for and win the 2024 GOP nomination. I took the prediction with a massive grain of salt as Wilson (author of Everything Trump Touches Dies) hardly has a line into the Trump family, but Parscale’s statement makes Wilson’s prediction seem plausible.
It’s a bad combination that state political parties are stacking by canceling nominating contests and the President’s campaign is talking about a dynasty where the Presidency and political power within the party is passed on to Trump’s children, just the same way as one of his slums or gaudy casinos will be. This should be a wakeup call to different groups of Trump-skeptical Republicans.
Some imagine they’ll bite the bullet, vote for Trump in 2020 to “save America”, and then in 2024, things can change with a new nominee and the party can shift identity back to a more traditional conservative party and towards successful outreach to ethnic minorities and women who Trump has turned off. It is now clear Trump and his family will not go silently into the good night once Trump’s time runs out.
Those who have had the courage to criticize the President such as U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, need to look at this as well. If they continue to speak their minds and call out this President’s actions and rhetoric, they’re not going to have a home. The GOP will belong to a group of people whose only merit for holding high political office is their relationship to President Trump.
These events prove that the old Republican Party of Lincoln and Reagan is dead, replaced by a Banana Republican Party set to be the tool of a self-dealing political family to maintain its prominence and power for generations to come.
That’s why it is past time for those who care about things like limited government, traditional values, and wise national defense policy to leave the GOP. We need a new major party that will promote those values to all Americans and leave the Republicans to promote their new central value: supporting the Trump family.
