As Donald Trump gears up for his second term, it’s clear: his grip on the Republican Party is as strong as ever. The party that once prided itself on being the fierce defender of the Constitution and the rule of law is now backing Trump’s election lies without hesitation. The same party that claims to deeply honor our armed forces is now standing behind a scandal-ridden choice for defense secretary—someone with hardly any qualifications to lead the world’s largest military.
Watching this relationship between Trump and the Republican Party unfold over the years has led me to ask myself a tough question—one I’ve been thinking about since my days as chair of the Republican National Committee, and even before that: What if the foundation of the Republican Party was flawed all along? What if the party’s claims about standing for the Constitution and rule of law were always more about political convenience than actual belief?
If those principles could be abandoned so easily under Trump, maybe they were never as strong as we thought. Perhaps Trump didn’t destroy the party’s values—he simply exposed the reality of what the Republican Party was always about.
There’s history here, too. Remember when the party abandoned the fight for civil rights? When it turned its back on the freedoms of African Americans and embraced figures like Barry Goldwater? Or when they compromised on the rule of law, standing behind someone like Richard Nixon, and later Trump, as the party’s faces?
In the past, some of us either didn’t want to accept what the party was or believed it was something better at its core. But now, looking back, I think we can finally see the truth more clearly. The curtain has been pulled back, and what’s revealed might not be what we were hoping for.
