It’s Trump’s Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 693-709
Author(s):  
Ronald B. Rapoport ◽  
Jack Reilly ◽  
Walter J. Stone

AbstractBased on analysis of a multi-wave national sample panel of Republican identifiers, we show the increasing coherence among rank and file Republicans around evaluations of Donald Trump. Differences between Republicans who preferred Trump for the GOP nomination and those who preferred another candidate (but, unlike the Never Trump group who said they could not support him in the general election if he won the nomination) are muted by the general election and 2018 waves. While “Never-Trumpers” in the nomination wave maintain their affective distance from Trump in the general election and 2018 waves, their evaluations become less negative. Our analysis suggests that Republicans’ favorability toward Trump increasingly aligned with their attitudes toward the Republican Party and their support for Trump’s effort to build a southern-border wall.

Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Susan A. MacManus ◽  
Jeremy D. Mayer ◽  
Mark J. Rozell

Donald Trump, the thrice married and publicly philandering Manhattan resident who had recently been pro-choice and pro-gun control, won the Republican nomination and the presidency in 2016 in part through his very strong showing among Southern white voters. How he managed to do that is the story of this chapter. Trump appealed to Southern white racial resentment, as well as to the anti-immigration fervor particularly evident in the low growth “stagnant” Southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi. But what was really remarkable is how he won the GOP nomination by doing well in all regions. The Republican Party has become unified around a largely Southern conception of conservatism: deeply religious, pro-military, and less concerned with free trade. In the general election, by contrast, regional polarization intensified in 2016. In both elections, Trump’s path to victory required him to do well among Southern whites, which he ably did.


Author(s):  
Doug McAdam

The tumultuous onset of Donald Trump’s administration has so riveted public attention that observers are in danger of losing a historical perspective. Trump’s rhetoric and behavior are so extreme that the tendency is to see him and the divisions he embodies as something new in American politics. Instead, Trump is only the most extreme expression of a brand of racial politics practiced ever more brazenly by the Republican Party since the 1960s. His unexpected rise to power was aided by a number of institutional developments in American politics that also have older roots. In the spirit of trying to understand these historical forces, the chapter describes (a) the origins and evolution of the exclusionary brand of racial politics characteristic of the Republican Party since the 1960s, and (b) three illiberal institutions that aided Trump’s rise to power, and that, if left unchanged, will continue to threaten the survival of American democracy.


The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-650
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Carson ◽  
Spencer Hardin ◽  
Aaron A. Hitefield

Abstract The 2020 elections brought to an end one of the most divisive and historic campaigns in the modern era. Former Vice President Joe Biden was elected the 46th President of the United States with the largest number of votes ever cast in a presidential election, defeating incumbent President Donald Trump in the process. The record turnout was especially remarkable in light of the ongoing pandemic surrounding COVID-19 and the roughly 236,000 Americans who had died of the virus prior to the election. This article examines the electoral context of the 2020 elections focusing on elections in both the House and Senate. More specifically, this article examines the candidates, electoral conditions, trends, and outcomes in the primaries as well as the general election. In doing so, we provide a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the climate and outcome of the 2020 congressional elections. Finally, the article closes with a discussion of the broader implications of the election outcomes on both the incoming 117th Congress as well as the upcoming 2022 midterm election.


Author(s):  
Matthew J. Lacombe

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of the most powerful interest groups in America, and has consistently managed to defeat or weaken proposed gun regulations — even despite widespread public support for stricter laws and the prevalence of mass shootings and gun-related deaths. This book provides an unprecedented look at how this controversial organization built its political power and deploys it on behalf of its pro-gun agenda. Taking readers from the 1930s to the age of Donald Trump, the book traces how the NRA's immense influence on national politics arises from its ability to shape the political outlooks and actions of its followers. The book draws on nearly a century of archival records and surveys to show how the organization has fashioned a distinct worldview around gun ownership and has used it to mobilize its supporters. It reveals how the NRA's cultivation of a large, unified, and active base has enabled it to build a resilient alliance with the Republican Party, and examines why the NRA and its members formed an important constituency that helped fuel Trump's unlikely political rise. The book sheds vital new light on how the NRA has grown powerful by mobilizing average Americans, and how it uses its GOP alliance to advance its objectives and shape the national agenda.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-141
Author(s):  
Hasbi Aswar

A speech from the President of United States, Donald Trump, who explicitly state Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel triggering debate that threatens harmonization of the Middle East. Disagreement appear from South East Asia state up to European state regarding to Trump’s statement, which turn into United States foreign policy. Trump’s statement described as the main reason of increasing tension Palestinian – Israel conflict. This essay argues that The US policy toward Jerusalem was merely influenced by domestic politics in the sense that to satisfy Trump`s main voters of the Republican Party that is Evangelical Christian base.


Never Trump ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 240-248
Author(s):  
Robert P. Saldin ◽  
Steven M. Teles

This concluding chapter highlights how the Republican Party has been substantially transformed by the experience of having Donald Trump at its head. The president's reelection in 2020 would only deepen that transformation. Deep sociological forces—in particular, a Republican Party base that is increasingly white, working class, Christian, less formally educated, and older—will lead the party to go where its voters are. What Trump started, his Republican successors will finish. Just as parties of the right across the Western world have become more populist and nationalist, so will the Republicans. That, of course, bodes poorly for most of the Never Trumpers, who combined a deep distaste for Trump personally with a professional interest in a less populist governing style and a disinclination to see their party go ideologically where he wanted to take it. Ultimately, the future is unwritten because it will be shaped by the choices of individuals. Never Trump will have failed comprehensively in its founding mission, which was to prevent the poison of Donald Trump from entering the nation's political bloodstream. However, it is likely to be seen, in decades to come, as the first foray into a new era of American politics.


2019 ◽  
pp. 138-180
Author(s):  
Robert G. Boatright ◽  
Valerie Sperling

This chapter explores themes in the campaign advertising of Senate candidates and their allies in the 2016 general election. It details the ways in which Democrats sought to tie their opponents to Donald Trump, highlighting Trump’s more offensive statements, and alleging that their opponents were “weak” or unmanly in their response to Trump. It also examines the extent to which Republican candidates sought to distance themselves from Donald Trump’s campaign in their ads, and how campaigns on both sides sought to tie their opponents to Trump and Clinton. The chapter pays particular attention to explicit and implicit references to gender and gender norms. It also examines whether particular ads were aimed at influencing particular demographic groups (men, women) by activating gender-normative expectations about candidates, in both positive ads and attack ads.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 719-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Barber ◽  
Jeremy C. Pope

What does the rise and election of Donald J. Trump as president mean for the future of conservatism? Republican elites continue to argue about whether Trump is changing the definition of conservatism for better or worse, although many Republicans seem content to let him shape the issues, direction, and brand of the traditional party of conservatism. We examine the ideological characteristics of different groups of Republican voters across three types of ideology: symbolic, operational, and conceptual. We find distinct differences between Republicans who consistently supported Trump and other groups that either supported him in the general election only and those who never supported him. The Never Trump camp stands out as a group that is less symbolically and operationally conservative but also better able to articulate what it means to be a conservative than do Trump’s core supporters, who look very much the opposite. These results suggest a contemporary Republican Party that is far from unified in what it means to be a conservative.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (04) ◽  
pp. 736-742
Author(s):  
Leslie Caughell

ABSTRACTCandidate gender has become a major theme in the 2016 presidential campaign. Secretary Clinton appears to be emphasizing her gender to a greater degree than she did in 2008, even invoking gender in primary debates as something that separates her from the political establishment. Her opponent in the general election, Donald Trump, claimed that Clinton was playing the “woman card” and that Clinton has little to offer as a candidate beyond her sex. However, scholars have little sense of the effectiveness of playing the woman card by emphasizing the historic first associated with a candidacy, a strategy with inherent risks. This project examines the effect of playing the woman card by emphasizing the historic nature of a female executive candidate, and demonstrates that playing the woman card may actually benefit female candidates among certain subsets of voters. Playing the gender card appeals to voters traditionally underrepresented in politics and to weak Democrats and independents. These findings suggest that playing the gender card may benefit female candidates, especially Democrats, in elections.


2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-85
Author(s):  
Victor Kattan

On 25 March 2019, U.S. president Donald Trump signed a proclamation recognizing the occupied Golan Heights as part of Israel. The Golan Heights proclamation, which endorses Israel's annexation of the territory captured from Syria in the 1967 war, was issued two weeks before the Israeli general election in a photo-op with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. Undermining internationally agreed-upon norms prohibiting states from recognizing the annexation of territory by force, the proclamation could have detrimental consequences for the international legal order, providing a precedent for other states to take steps to annex territory they claim is necessary for their defense.


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