Trumpism Here to Stay

The oldest president ever at inauguration ascends to the throne today in the nation's capital guarded by 25,000 troops, a few of whom have been relieved of duty because of the possibility of insider attacks reminiscent of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.

Of the big questions tossed up after the January 6 mob riot on Capitol Hill the foremost is definitely where the Republican Party goes from here. Thomas Edsall's column this morning samples academic opinion and concludes mildly, no doubt so as not to piss in Biden's inaugural punch bowl, that nativism, bigotry and xenophobia (now called Trumpism) are here to stay in the Grand Old Party. The only smiley face Edsall manages is a fairy tale about Generation Z voters riding to the rescue in ten years, similar to the fairy tale of rising Hispanic voter hegemony with which mainstream Democrats have comforted themselves for the last 15 years. Now that black and brown people are disaffiliating from the Democratic Party, a new collective hallucination is required.

Of course Trumpism is here to stay because Trumpism has been in the works at least since Brown v. Board of Education. In other words, Trumpism is synonymous with the modern Republican Party. You can't have a Republican Party without Trumpism. There will be some sort of kabuki to satisfy Wall Street and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But in the end the party that will fracture first is not the GOP but the Democrats.