The Elephants in the Room (A Book about Trump's Party)

 

Throughout this entire decade of Trump and Trumpism, numerous journalists have enriched our impressions of this president and the movement that has attached himself to him - most recently Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump (Simon & Schuster), by two New York Times journalists, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. After the journalists, inevitably come the political scientists, until finally in due course the historians will weigh in. Seth Masket is a Political Science professor at the University of Denver, a specialist in political parties, who has already attempted to address the Democrats story in this period with Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), has now turned his (and our) attention to an important part of the Republican story with The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

Masket starts from the fact that until recently both parties' presidential nominating processes "have followed a predictable set of rules." The Republicans, however, have changed "because the DC-based 'establishment' elites who used to run the party lost control of it to a populist, nativist grassroots faction outside Washington." It was Donald Trump who facilitated that faction's acquisition of power. "They don't see this as temporary madness; they see this as the movement that put them in charge and actually cares about the things they care about." Masket "uses the 2024 Republican presidential nomination as a lens for examining changes within the Republican Party and in the relationship between party insiders and voters."

What Masket calls populist conservatism has three key tenets: People-centrism, Anti-pluralism, and Moralized anti-elitism. He traces the history of the rise of this element in the party (at the expense of the previous "fusionist" consensus) through several stages:

1. 1960-1968 Learning from Nixon's Loss.                                                                                    2. 1970s The Rise of Primaries, the Fall of Gatekeepers.                                                            3. 1990s Pat Buchanan, Nativism, and Populism.                                                                        4. Mid-1990s The Gingrich Revolution.                                                                                        5. 2008-2012 The Tea Party and Obama's First Term.                                                                  6. The Rise of Conservative Media.                                                                                            7. Late 2000s-2010s The Demise of the Republican Establishment.

Having recounted this history, Masket moves into the present (the period after 2020). His methodology basically involves interviewing and surveying Republican party county chairs.  One might counter that county chairs and other formal party officials don't matter that much anymore, but that, of course, is precisely Masket's point.   "Trump did not win the 2024 nomination because party leaders were pulling for him and guiding party voters.  Indeed, many party leaders, including those who strongly supported him in his first term, were quite cool to a third Trump nomination.   They worried about his ability to win and the baggage he brought with him, and looked to a range of other candidates as possibilities. But they had no mechanism for picking such a candidates over the very strong preferences of party voters."

Masket concludes that neither party insiders nor donors rallied to Trump "until the party's voters made him the nominee." He had, after all, lost re-election, which is usually not rewarded in American politics. In particular, "the indictments caused many Republicans to rally behind Trump and defend him." Evangelical Christians are known to be among Trump's strongest supporters. "Opposition to an immoral person holding the presidency was one of the most commonly cited rationales among evangelicals for impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998-9, but less than two decades later, immorality was not a dealbreaker. Christianity did not undergo any major doctrinal shifts during this time; rather, its conservative adherents rethought the political implications of their faith."

Masket also examines the differences between Trump supporters and other Republicans. Trump's "supporters are considerably poorer, less educated, more conservative, and more likely to identify as evangelical Christian." They also share "a commitment to social order and hierarchy, endorsement of conspiratorial thinking, strong opposition to 'elite' rule in their party, a focus on immigration, and less acknowledgment of the existence of racial discrimination."

Masket concludes that the changes that brought Trump to power "are very much still present and aren't about to change back."