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As the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives saga continues with no end in sight, one thing has become abundantly clear: Former President Donald J. Trump's seemingly unbreakable stronghold on the GOP is over.
Many in the Freedom Caucus who once spoke of him with a messianic-like reverence now openly defy him. Trump ruled the Party by fear. His Twitterfeed bully pulpit scared all Republicans who defied him into submission, lest they be berated by his legion of online sycophants.
But Trump's experiment with Truth Social, a fledgling social media knock off, has failed to produce the same power. He can't rally his base by attacking the Left because the Left isn't on Truth Social; criticizing Democratic lawmaker Adam Schiff with a clever nickname doesn't work as well when you cannot @ Adam Schiff.
What were once concise, scathing tweets are now long, boring rants on Truth Social. And IRL, Trump's legendary rally act became hackneyed and stale, to the point where he's pretty much abandoned them.
The 2022 midterms failed to produce the massive returns that many Republicans had believed were coming in part because of Trump's refusal to abandon election denialism.
And that's what's become clear this week: Many on the GOP's far right flank are beginning to see that Trump is much like McCarthy—an opportunist who is willing to oscillate between the far Right and the establishment based upon what nets him the most personal gain.
Thus, when Trump ordered Republicans to vote for Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House on Truth Social, he failed to move even a single vote.
The former president is now giving a full-throated endorsement of @GOPLeader pic.twitter.com/ldKFLsSdNv
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) January 4, 2023
Rep. Lauren Boebert not only refused to go along with Trump's orders to vote for Kevin McCarthy, she directed an order back at him to tell Kevin McCarthy "it's time to withdraw."
Rep. Lauren Boebert said former President Donald Trump called House Republicans to "knock this off" and elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. "The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, 'Sir, you do not have the votes and it's time to withdraw,'" Boebert said. pic.twitter.com/nCSVBwBpu9
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) January 4, 2023
Two years ago, such defiance would have been unfathomable. Boebert would have been attacked and would have had to make every effort to ingratiate herself with Trump and his reactionary base of support.
Today, there have been no consequences for her defiance. In fact, some in the right wing media are cheering her and her anti-McCarthy colleagues on for their willingness to oppose the status quo.
Boebert has every reason to stand up to Trump; though Colorado was redistricted, she won her last election in nail biter by only 1,500 votes after breezing to a comfortable six-point victory in 2020. In other words, Trump's endorsement did nothing to make this election easier for her.
Though Boebert publicly blames McCarthy for the GOP's disappointing midterm performance, she and others clearly see a diminished Trump, whose midterm message was about a past election rather than the American people's present concerns.
Trump also handpicked candidates in his own mold to run in important, high profile elections. He found wealthy people and celebrities like Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz to be the new faces of Trumpism in electoral politics. Both men had questionable ties to the states they were running in, and Oz in particular was viewed as a corporate outsider in a blue-collar Rust Belt state.
When Trump stood on the debate stage with career politicians like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush, he did so as a maverick outsider to the Right. He was viewed as someone who didn't mince words and stood up to the Left. He had the credibility to call out the rigged game the wealthy were playing because he played it from the inside.
The far Right may be coming to realize that Trump can longer be thought of as an outsider when he works hardest to promote and support his wealthy, celebrity friends for public office.
Trump is still immensely popular in the GOP, but his grip is loosening quickly. The far Right realizes that the mantle of pseudo-populist Trumpism, which seeks to blow up long established norms and institutions, can be carried on without him. While many of us have learned our lesson about counting Trump out entirely, we've also come to recognize that today is not 2015.
Dr. Jason Nichols is an award winning senior lecturer in the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland College Park and was the longtime editor-in-chief of Words Beats & Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
