A GOP Reckoning? If Trump Loses His Reelection Bid, the Party May Face an Identity Crisis

Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is something few could have imagined when he launched what seemed an unlikely bid for the 2016 nomination.

Even if Trump loses reelection Tuesday, his grip on the GOP is strong enough that it could take some time before the party figures out a path forward.

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A new think tank, the American Compass, is trying to make it clear that “post-Trumpism needs to be very different from pre-Trumpism.”

“Trump just proved wrong virtually everything that the right-of-center thought it knew about what its politicians were supposed to be saying, what its constituents actually cared about,” said Executive Director Oren Cass, a former adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

Cass argued conservative public policy became too dominated by libertarian impulses, a hands-off approach that left a lot of needs unaddressed.

“We see a much more substantial role for public policy to play in making the market work well,” he said.