… Months ago, President Trump tweeted, “liberate” Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia and “save your great 2nd Amendment.” The national conservative funding network and Fox News jumped in to promote the protests, but the hundreds who joined the capitol protests fell far short of the Tea Party protests against President Barack Obama that shaped our country and polarized politics for the past decade.
Watching this weak, but nonetheless intimidating, defense of the president led me to a new conclusion about the 2020 election: The main issue is not whether President Donald Trump will get re-elected, but how a Tea Party–dominated Republican Party reacts to its humiliating defeat.
Most observers understand that Trump’s 2016 win was improbable, requiring an inside straight of Electoral College state wins. His rallies that year displayed a white working-class revolt that made Trump and his bravado possible.
But what almost everybody missed was how divided the Republican Party had become and how trapped Trump was within his own bloc of evangelical and Tea Party loyalists. Everyone missed how insecure was Donald Trump’s hold on his own party, and how much of his politics is just bravado. CONT.
Stanley B. Greenberg (Greenberg Research), American Prospect
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