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The Receding Democratic Majority
US Republicans Could Finally Win the Argument on Immigration
The New Conservative Voter

Politicians are not known for decency or decorum, but typically they wait for a leader’s defeat before diving into the scrum for a successor. Not this time. Even before US President Donald Trump gets his chance at a second term, a battle has begun over where the Republican Party may turn after.

The reason for this pre-emptive conflict is the inevitable expiration of Trumpism itself. The president will sit atop the party so long as he remains in office, but he is building no intellectual foundation, no institutional infrastructure and no policy agenda to provide the basis for a political coalition once his singular personality eventually departs. As with an heirless monarch, all sides foresee the vacuum and vie to fill it.

In another era, a stable party apparatus that predated Mr Trump might be waiting in the wings. But of course, if that existed, the party would not have been levelled by the Trumpian earthquake. Instead, its strains and infirmities, so well exploited by Mr Trump, define the contours of arguments about how to rebuild. The fundamental question is this: what happens to a party beholden to free-market dogma when the market fails to deliver?

Continue Reading at Financial Times
Oren Cass
Oren Cass is the executive director at American Compass.
@oren_cass
Recommended Reading
The Receding Democratic Majority

Demography may be destiny, but its party affiliation is not

US Republicans Could Finally Win the Argument on Immigration

Political conditions in the US are ripe for rare progress on immigration, writes Oren Cass in the Financial Times.

The New Conservative Voter

A realignment that focuses the Republican Party on pro-worker economic policy is well underway