Republican strategist describes GOP's Trump 'paradox'

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published 27 October 2020

Regardless of whether President Trump leaves office after a November election defeat or sticks in the White House for another four years, there's already questions among Republicans about the direction of the party in the post-Trump era, The New York Times reports.

Trump is the most significant player in American politics currently, and his presence in the Oval Office is a major, if not singular, factor in the national discourse, but Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist, told the Times he doesn't think there's really all that much to show for his takeover of the party. "You end up with this weird paradox where [Trump] stands to haunt the GOP for many years to come, but on the substance it's like he was never even there," Donovan said.

The Times compared Trump's tenure in office to that of former President Ronald Reagan. Reagan, per the Times, merged the Republican Party with "a conservative movement that had been gestating since the 1950s," and by the end of his first term, "there was not much ambiguity about what the GOP ... was transforming into." Trump, on the other hand, has similarly "co-opted virtually every power center" in the party and "disassembled much of the old order," but "has built very little in its place," therefore leaving both his ardent loyalists and uneasy supporters unsure of what comes next. Read more at The New York Times.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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