Elephants aren’t cannibals. Really. Scour every article of National Geographic you find, read every dusty textbook you get, ask every biologist you meet—the answer will always be the same. Unfortunately, biologists, well-meaning as they are, remain sadly unacquainted with one particularly elusive type of elephant: the kind that prefers super PACs to savannahs. In the past few weeks, House Republicans made history by, for the first time in US history, ousting their own majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, through a no-confidence vote. Eight republicans, with Florida representative Matt Gaetz at their helm, sided with the democratic minority in removing McCarthy from office. In the ensuing weeks, House Republicans began to fracture into various factions. It was only after three failed elections, with attempts by representatives Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan to win the speakership, that the party finally settled on Louisiana representative Mike Johnson. And while this may seem like a localized, congressional dispute, the truth is that the conflict among House Republicans is only a microcosm of the broader divide within the Republican party at large.
Without Donald Trump at the mantle, the Grand Old Party (GOP) now finds itself bursting at the seams; the wide and disparate array of political enclaves that comprise it are no longer united.
The Republican party’s stance on foreign policy exemplifies this perfectly. Traditional conservatism has long since advocated for interventionist policy. It was Ronald Reagan, in many ways the father of modern conservatism, who called it America’s destiny to take “leadership of the free world.” And for a long time, this view has been held unwaveringly by the party establishment. In 2003, George W. Bush championed the United States’ invasion of Iraq, stating America’s wish for Iraq was to “free its people and protect the world from grave danger.” While a large segment of the Republican Party still holds these views, the last few years have seen a radical shift in party ideology. It may have been Trump who first touted the slogan “America First,” but the isolationist ideas and rhetoric behind it has spread like wildfire. Its most recent manifestation is in the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict. 44 percent of republicans believe the US is providing Ukraine with too much aid; in fact, recent polling shows that the average republican now has a more favorable view of Putin than Biden. This is coming from the same party that, with Reagan at the head, referred to the Soviet Union as “the focus of evil in the modern world.” The simple fact is that it’s just not sustainable to have a political party so deeply split between two diametrically opposing views. Half the party grew up learning to hate the Soviet Union and everything it stood for, while the other half is running headlong in the opposite direction.
Another core tenet of conservatism is in its whole-hearted support of big business. Tax cuts, deregulation, and laissez-faire economics are the bread and butter of republican policy. So how is it that in 2020, Wall Street gave five times as much money to democrats than republicans? Or that a staggering 77 percent of executives pledged their votes to Biden? Is every business leader in America an idiot? Is Biden just that charismatic? The truth is, many of the actions taken by Trump, and the Republican Party at large, run antithetical to what most executives actually want. Big businesses don’t want a president who stokes vaccine conspiracy when vaccination is one of the few surefire ways to quickly revitalize the economy. Big business doesn’t want a president who tweets the first thing on his mind, especially when the stock market is so volatile to a president’s words. By placing more value on his own whims than on economic stability, Trump, and the wing of the Republican Party that succeeded him, risk alienating corporate America.
While the Republican Party may have been temporarily united under Trump, the aftermath of his presidency has left little more than a fractured, splintered shell of the GOP. The conflict among House Republicans acted only as a symptom of the monumental schism the party is undergoing.
Until this divide is fully acknowledged, the republican party is inevitably going to fall victim to discord and dissension. For now, it’s just the elephant in the room.
Thomas Payne • Dec 23, 2023 at 6:57 PM
Most American “isolationists” have pushed for the avoidance of the nation’s involvement in what Thomas Jefferson called “entangling alliances.” Instead, those who focus on what they believe is best for the U.S. have held that America could and should use its wide-ranging influence and economic strength to encourage the ideals of freedom and democracy and free trade with other nations by means of negotiation rather than direct warfare while also avoiding entangling alliances in regards to the wars of other nations. You know, supporting crazy ideas like peace.