Apart from ripping off America’s mask, diminishing its soft-power and exposing the government’s true nature, Donald Trump’s other legacy will be the virtual destruction of the Republican Party.
No, Trump is not going to play the role of some grand political chess player.
He is too incompetent for that and he does not need to.
Trump played the role of a great definer.
He set the definition of what Republican Party means today and lowered the benchmark to a level that no revival of the party would be possible without its de-facto dismantlement.
During Trump’s presidency, the Republican Party became associated with ignorance, arrogance, racism, and cut-throat capitalism.
The Democratic Party is not much different; it’s merely a more refined version of it.
In any case, the Republican Party can no longer survive without Trumpism.
This is something many Republican politicians understand and aim to capitalize on, but will most likely fail.
In Trump’s last few days as president and Biden’s first few days in the White House, Mike Pompeo flooded Twitter with cheesy Trump-style tweets clearly aimed at Trump’s support base.
While these might produce some limited impact domestically, Pompeo or anyone else aiming to reposition themselves as a new Donald Trump will face formidable internal and external challenges.
Internally, the US political establishment will fight tooth and nail to prevent another Trump like malfunction of the US’s corrupt political system.
Superficial “pro-Muslim”, anti-racism and pro-leftist slogans and policies will be utilized to pacify the masses.
However, this leftist-liberal mask will only further aggravate the domestic situation in the US.
Millions of Americans voted for Trump because they define their politics in opposition to Barack Obama and Joe Biden-voiced slogans.
Those who assume that millions of Trumpists will be re-educated by the liberal think-tanks and media, are simply delusional.
The US is divided and that divide, according to even mainstream pundits is only going to increase.
On the external front, US allies in NATO and the EU are unlikely to stay passive if any US politician comes close to winning over the Trumpist masses.
Trumpist political culture, its narrative and worldview are highly unpredictable and too shallow for most state institutions and statesmen to deal with.
Thus, the EU and other US allies, apart from US-backed dictators in the Muslim world, will do their utmost politicking to maintain the US as predictable as possible.
This will make it very difficult for any Republican politician to build a career based on Trump’s support base.
At the same time, disregarding millions of voters and their outlook will make it very difficult for the Republican Party to make a come back into the White House in the near future.
What happens inside US borders is America’s internal problem.
Since the US is internally divided, its political elite will attempt to build internal cohesion through the exaggeration of external threats.
While the alleged Russian and Chinese threats will continue to dominate headlines, it’s unlikely that the US ruling elites will skip hyping up anti-Muslim sentiment.
During the George Bush regime, anti-Islam sentiment was a bipartisan platform around which the American elite united.
Why would they not resort to a tactic that worked before?