What will happen to the Republican Party after Trump?

The post-Trump GOP will be made up of 2 warring factions

Marco Rubio, a Tea Partier, and Larry Hogan.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

Regardless of whether President Trump is re-elected in November, the future of the Republican Party belongs to him. His legacy — arguments about its true value and how it should be understood, its relationship with previous right-wing insurgent movements such as the Tea Party — will determine the course of the GOP's fortunes for the next decade.

This will be the case even if the moment Trump leaves office a consensus emerges in his party in favor of repudiating him. I do not expect this to happen, and not only because the American people are absurdly sentimental about living former presidents. The anti-Trump wing of the GOP does not, for all practical purposes, exist. The Bulwark, the Lincoln Project, and similar outfits are part of the centrist liberal media and political establishment; they will not find themselves welcome partners in a post-Trump conservative coalition.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.