There are many parts of the legacy President Trump will leave behind when his term ends Wednesday. One of them is a broken Republican Party.
In four years, Trump ideologically twisted a party that once had a coherent conservative governing philosophy, which he does not. He put a vise grip on the party’s grass roots and persuaded many of them to believe that truth does not matter. He opened up the party’s coalition to an emboldened white supremacist movement.
The party’s deterioration has been an ongoing story of the Trump presidency, but the damage done and the challenge of restoration have been underlined in the weeks since President-elect Joe Biden won the election with a comfortable electoral college majority and a decisive margin in the popular vote, amid no evidence of widespread fraud. Continue reading.