Former US Representative and notable Never-Trumper Liz Cheney continued her bashing of former president and current Republican Party nominee Donald Trump and declared the GOP to be a dying entity due to its association with him. But along with her usual prattle, Cheney did speak an undeniable truth: A major political realignment is coming, and there is likely no way to avoid it now.
“There is certainly going to be a big shift, I think, in how our politics work – I don’t know exactly what that will look like,” Cheney told The New York Times’ White House correspondent Peter Baker at the 2024 Cap Times Idea Fest, an annual event hosted by Madison, Wisconsin, newspaper The Capital Times. “I think far too much has happened that’s too damaging,” she continued, dismissing the notion that the GOP establishment can simply return to business as usual after Trump finally exits the scene, whether that be in 2024 or January 2029.
This Is Not Her Father’s GOP
What happened, of course, is that a number of politicians comfortably aligned with the political status quo in Washington, DC, lost the influence it had on the Republican Party for close to 30 years with the Trump tsunami of 2016. Then, to its horror, it had to watch Trump become even more popular among the GOP grassroots after he was toppled from office in 2020.
What Cheney is perhaps finally coming to terms with is the fact that the ideas and beliefs represented by Trump have taken solid root among Republican voters. That it is not merely a cult of personality destined to evaporate as soon as the leading man leaves the stage.
The stark divide between Trump’s America First supporters and the pre-2016 Republican brand has only continued to grow during the tumultuous four years of the Biden administration. The plight of Springfield, Ohio, residents besieged by Haitian migrants who have poured into the town due to the so-called humanitarian parole immigration policies under Biden’s auspices speaks volumes.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine embodies pre-Trump, old-school GOP “conservatism.” The former longtime US House member and senator has unabashedly defended importing some 20,000 Haitians into a city of 59,000 because it is a boon for big business interests. Like Cheney, DeWine was happy to rely on a particular big-box media goliath to help give him a platform.
The Conservative Case for Cheap Foreign Labor
“Springfield is having a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation. Some of that is thanks to the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs,” DeWine wrote in a September 20 op-ed for The New York Times. “They are there legally. They are there to work.”
That DeWine would shrug off the manipulation of immigration law inherent in Biden’s Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) migration program as perfectly lawful and emphasize top-down economic factors over cultural, social, and community well-being is another example of the enormous gulf separating the divided party.
Not to be outdone, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on September 24 slammed another America First tenet championed by Trump: tariffs. “I’m not a fan of tariffs. They raise the prices for American consumers. I’m more of a free-trade kind of Republican that remembers how many jobs are created by the exports that we engage in,” McConnell declared in response to Trump vowing to slap a 200% tariff on US farm equipment manufacturing icon John Deere if it moves production to Mexico.
Thus, in a matter of days, two veteran GOP establishment figures, one a sitting governor and the other the party leader in the upper chamber of Congress, came out in support of what many Trump backers regard as fundamentally unacceptable policy positions. DeWine steadfastly defended bringing in masses of foreigners to fill jobs inside the US while McConnell championed the right of corporations to outsource American jobs abroad.
This is the heart of the irreconcilable split that has Cheney correctly diagnosing political realignment as inevitable, even if she still refuses to understand why her style of politics is being harried out of the GOP.
The same drama is quietly playing out on the other side of the aisle, but with one major difference. Among Democrats, the forces of the establishment hold sway. While America First Republicans have successfully amassed power within the GOP, insurgent progressives have failed to do the same in the blue ranks. An unwanted Joe Biden was foisted upon them in 2020, and they could do nothing to stop it. Biden was then pushed through again in 2024, and when it became apparent he was physically not up to the task, his establishment-tethered vice president was handed the nomination without so much as a single vote being cast by the electorate.
It seems there are three major political blocs coalescing in the US today: America First, an ideologically motivated progressive left, and an insider establishment populated by both Democrats and Republicans. The realignment Cheney refers to is taking place of its own accord.
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