Under the aegis of Trump, the Republican movement of classical conservatism has veered sharply towards hard protectionism, isolationism, populism and above all confrontationism

Various polls that seek to ascertain the greatest President in the US’ history have almost always ranked Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s most esteemed leader. Lincoln, the quintessential statesman, was also the first Republican President who is remembered for his Gettysburg Address,  which posited the Grand Old Party’s (GOP  as the Republican Party is known) progressive commitment towards liberty, equal rights, republicanism and democracy. Beyond unmatched statecraft with dignity, aplomb and humility, Lincoln was known to be personally sympathetic, magnanimous and accommodative of “others.”

The Republican Party of Lincoln was indeed founded on the noble impulses of anti-slavery, social progression and liberality. Today, the same party has an incumbent President in the White House, Donald Trump, who enjoys the highest-ever approval rating for any President from within the same party i.e, 95 per cent (such polls are a 20th and 21st century phenomenon only). The Republican movement from classical conservatism has veered sharply towards hard protectionism, isolationism, populism and above all, confrontationism.

In this era of Republicanism, forget basic courtesies afforded by Opposition party colleagues, even own partymen are not spared. Take the example of Trump’s public anger against former Republican-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, “Had failed presidential candidate @MittRomney devoted the same energy and anger to defeating a faltering Barack Obama as he sanctimoniously does to me, he could have won the election.” Romney’s ostensible crime was that he had taken a position on Trump’s impeachment notice by stating, “The best we can do in the Senate is strive to meet the obligations outlined by our founding fathers — to honour our Constitutional duty and fulfil our oath to do impartial justice.” This style of language and expression is clearly out of place in Trump’s Republican Party.

Trump is no versed Republican ideologue and has brazenly changed party affiliation five times, including that to the principal Opposition party, the Democrats. In 2004, he had said, “I probably identify more as a Democrat.” He returned to the Republican Party only in 2012 and by 2016, won the presidential contest as a Republican candidate. Political and personal flip-flops notwithstanding, today, Trump has firmly ensconced himself at the centre of redefining his party’s moorings that has very little bearing to the one under Lincoln. The party’s perfunctory “11 principles of American renewal” includes one on “values”, which ironically states, “Our country should value the traditions of family, life, religious liberty and hard work.”

Trump’s complete grip on the Republican Party’s fate is exemplified by  party Chairwoman, Ronna Romney McDaniel, who is a personal nominee and Trump’s sworn loyalist even though she is the niece of fellow Republican Senator, Romney. For good measure, McDaniel (she had presciently dropped her middle name) tweeted obligingly, “This is not the first time I have disagreed with Mitt and I imagine it will not be the last. The bottom line is President Trump did nothing wrong and the Republican Party is more united than ever behind him.”

So what explains the phenomenal success of a President who is known to lie more frequently than a human washes hands? Washington Post’s fact-checker had documented 10,796 presidential statements in 869 days that were either misleading or outright lies. This calculates to more than 12 lies a day. Trump slams any inconvenient fact or query as “fake news.” He incredulously stated, “What you’re seeing and what you

are reading is not what’s happening.”

Clearly, Trump’s brashness and bravado at “getting even” with the historically-perceived snootiness and indulgences of the intelligentsia (read Democrats or the progressive/moderate elements within the Republican Party) appeals to the most basic of basic instincts — among those who are made to believe that they  are sufferers of “historical injustices.” This spirit of “undoing the past” is carefully reposed and invoked in the rallying cry of “Make America Great Again.” It resonates subliminally and powerfully as it cuts across societal faultlines and feeds the latent racist, anti-immigrant, protectionist and nativist instincts. Constituents feel redeemed and vindicated as Trump tramples on the sophisticated logic and concerns of those who disagree.

A reclaimed sense of identity is inherent as Trump pooh-poohs climate change, abuses allies, disengages from multilateral bodies like the UN and in the world of a new Republican Party even own members are not spared the venom. At the funeral ceremony of the iconic Republican Senator Warrior John McCain, where Trump was specifically not invited, his daughter lamented, “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”

Of the major candidates challenging Trump for the Republican nomination in the 2020 presidential bid, the number one challenger is Bill Weld with just 1.31 per cent of popular votes as against 97.15 per cent for Trump. The number two challenger, Joe Walsh, with 1.08 per cent popular votes conceded, “I think it’s important that there’s a Republican out there every day who says, this is not my Republican Party. This is not what I believe in. I’m not cruel. I’m not bigoted.” Yet, it is Trump who will emerge as the inevitable pick of the Republican Party in 2020. The Trump stranglehold over the Republican nomination is complete and as the date of electioneering beckons, personal, moral and ideological integrity becomes increasingly immaterial in the face of hard factors like winnability. Above all, “the only other option”, which is assiduously painted as abject surrender, may hem with immigrants and basically enfeeble the American Dream.

Besides Lincoln, the party, which prided on the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D Eisenhower and such-like distinguished statesman, is now poised to re-host an ideological suspect, who has left no stone unturned to personally polarise and divide the nation as its winning candidate. Now, Trump is the first sitting President to seek re-bid after being tried for impeachment. Fear-mongering, personalised insults, innuendoes and brooking no contrarian opinion within his party has done the trick.

(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands)