Editor’s note: Colorado political scientist Seth Masket spent three years ahead of the 2024 presidential preference primary researching the rise of Donald Trump as a viable candidate following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Masket’s new book “The Elephants in the Room” details how Trump acquired and maintained his power over the Republican Party. Masket’s detailed analysis of surveys and interviews with Republicans, particularly local county chairs in early primary election states, offers a glimpse of what Americans can expect from Republican Party candidates following the Midterm election in November. Below is an abridged and edited excerpt from his book.
I spoke with New Hampshire state Rep. Matthew Pitaro at a local Republican Party fundraiser in the summer of 2023. At that point, he had mostly complementary things to say about the Republican presidential candidate field: 鈥淒eSantis, and the entire field, they鈥檙e all great. I admire a lot of the people in there. Nikki Haley 鈥� Tim Scott I鈥檝e met several times, and I admire all those people. The thing with Donald Trump is that he鈥檚 a proven commodity.鈥� There he echoed what Nathan Shrader of New England College said: 鈥淲hy are Republicans going to vote for a knockoff of Trump over the original product?鈥�
This was the central problem for Republican Party leaders as 2024 approached. Many were wary of the idea of nominating Donald Trump 鈥� who had lost reelection, organized a violent riot to stay in office, faced dozens of criminal indictments, and did not poll particularly well 鈥� especially when there were a number of skilled and well-qualified candidates available to replace him. And yet the Republican primary voters they represented were not interested in what they had to say on the matter. They wanted Trump and could not be dissuaded or organized around.
The 2024 nomination of Donald Trump didn鈥檛 happen in isolation; a great many things had to change in the Republican Party in previous decades to get it to that point. Key changes date back to at least the 1960s, when supporters of Richard Nixon 鈥� the last person to lose the White House only to become his party鈥檚 nominee again prior to Trump 鈥� charted a more populist and racialized campaign approach to gain office and steer the party.
Even if Trump didn鈥檛 start the populist movement within the party, he certainly added his own flavor to it. In particular, his successful approach to the 2016 nomination 鈥� flying in the face of convention and taking advantage of a divided and disorganized establishment 鈥� fundamentally changed decades of party practices in presidential nominations. Additionally, his efforts to consolidate support and punish dissenting voices, even in the face of his failed reelection bid and his failed effort to overturn that election, further cemented his power over the party and its broader media environment. This control extended to state and local party organizations, where party officials rallied to defend Trump, punish his critics, and adopt pro-Trump platforms.
The influential 2008 book The Party Decides argued that party elites can steer presidential nominations through their allocation of resources important to a primary campaign 鈥� endorsements, money, expertise, etc. 鈥� and that who elites like is a far better predictor of who will become the nominee than any measure of voter preferences. As the authors themselves admit, the evidence supporting that theory was already under some strain when the book came out. Barack Obama, for example, was not the candidate with the most elite Democratic endorsements in 2008 but won that nomination contest anyway. But then the theory really ran aground in 2016 when Trump won his party鈥檚 nomination despite party leaders being largely opposed to him. The Democratic nominations of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 were consistent with the Party Decides theory, and arguably so was the very late and very fast nomination of Kamala Harris in July of 2024.
But Trump鈥檚 2024 nomination made it clear that Republican Party leaders are really not in charge of that party. Several local Republican leaders with whom I spoke for my new book, including some who looked back with fondness on Trump鈥檚 first term, expressed a strong interest in their party picking someone else for 2024. They pined for an influential party elder 鈥� a Republican Jim Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi, or Terry McAuliffe 鈥� who could put a thumb on the scale for an electable, relatively scandal-free candidate who could unite the various factions of the party and deliver a decisive win in November. These same people also conceded that no such party elder existed within the GOP, and that the party was no longer organized around nor interested in listening to such a person. The only person with real influence in the party was the leading candidate for the 2024 nomination. His voters were passionate and committed, and they were in charge. Party 鈥渓eaders鈥� really couldn鈥檛 do much more than watch, and get on board before it was too late for them.
A very real question, though, is whether that is the case with Republican nominations from here on, or whether that抖阴ap just a function of Donald Trump. Another way of asking that is, what happens to the GOP after Trump?
The post-Trump era of the GOP
I followed up with several of the county chairs in my survey to ask about this very topic in the spring of 2025. I was curious to know what they thought the 2028 presidential nomination would look like and who the next leader of the Republican Party was. The answers were wide-ranging, but largely suggested that the party was not about to snap back to the pre-Trump days. Palm Beach County chair Michael Barnett summed this view up effectively:
“When President Trump won the presidential preference primary in 2016, the Republican Party became the party of Trump. It remains the party of Trump to this day. Even when he leaves office, that will be his legacy, and whoever runs in 2028 will run in Trump鈥檚 shadow. This is the party of Trump just as Reagan made the Republican Party his own during his term and in the decades that followed.”
John Ball, the former chair of the Republican Party of Riley County, Kansas, saw things similarly: 鈥淚 think the Republican Party will remain to support common sense policies very similar as shaped by President Trump鈥� little change. Mr. Trump will continue to be a force in the party for many years after his presidency.鈥� He thought that the next party leader would likely come from Trump鈥檚 second-term cabinet: 鈥淚 think the mantel of leadership will probably go to Secretary of State Rubio as the primary with Vice President Vance as an alternate.鈥�
Clay County, Missouri鈥檚 Gary Smedile struck a similar tone, saying, 鈥淚 think JD Vance has a future and if so, he鈥檚 the 鈥榟eir apparent鈥� to MAGA. But we have many good and capable leaders and potential standard bearers. Ron DeSantis. Josh Hawley. Marco Rubio. Other 鈥榩layers to be named later.鈥欌�� Yet Smedile saw the future of the party as something of a blend of the Trump populist wing with the previous establishment:
“The populist, working class, middle class tendencies of the party are here for an extended period. The ‘institutional’ aspects of leadership will remain but more in the background. It will be a confluence of what you hear on podcasts, and see with grass-roots members combined with the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and National Review鈥�. I think the biggest surprise is how much aligned the Trump/MAGA wing has become with the more ‘traditional’ wings of the Republican Party. I think there remains some continued sorting out regarding policies, particularly in foreign affairs. But from a domestic standpoint, I never would have predicted the broad support for tariffs, for example.”
Like other chairs, Wes Parry of Brooke County, West Virginia thought that Vance and Rubio would be top contenders for 2028. But he also believed that there were dramatic populist insurgencies continuing within both major parties:
“I believe neither party is going to look the same inside of 4 years. The people that formed the new coalition and put Trump over the top ‘bigly’ are by and large fed up. We have watched the 鈥渦ni-party鈥� make themselves rich while our jobs were farmed overseas and the middle class collapsed. If the Republican party wants to continue as a party, they better heed this and start passing some legislation that matters鈥�. On the Democrat side of things, I believe their party has been surrendered to the most radical anti-American progressive members of their party. Honestly, what type of Joe Manchin Democrat can survive in that party today? 鈥 do not believe we will just be content to sit back and hear ‘this is the best we can get’ from our elected representatives any longer. Those two factions are what the two parties will be going forward, it remains to be seen which is the majority.
After talking with these and dozens of other local party leaders over the past several years, my own take is slightly different. I think it抖阴ap helpful to view conservative populism as the dominant faction of the party, but the other previous 鈥渆stablishment鈥� or 鈥渇usionist鈥� faction still exists in some form. A great many transformations occurred in the late 1900s and early 2000s to bring the Republican Party to the point at which the populist faction could compete for control of the party. But it wasn鈥檛 really the dominant faction until Trump put it there. Trump adds some imprecise percentage to the tally and puts the populists on top, but once he is no longer running for office, that percentage will shrink. My expectation is that the different factions will be more in competition for party control and it will not always be obvious who will prevail.
Regardless of Trump鈥檚 own influence, the changes that helped bring him to power in the party 鈥� changes in the media environment and campaign finance system, the unpopularity of the previous establishment, the rise of a populist movement, the increasing application of racial sentiments to people鈥檚 political choices, and more 鈥� are very much still present and aren鈥檛 about to change back.
But regardless of which faction is dominant in the post-Trump party, perhaps the more important question is whether those elephants in the room 鈥� party insiders, elites, chairs 鈥� are back in charge, or whether they will remain leaders in name only, always trying to catch up to the voters who are in command.
Seth Masket is a professor of political science at the University of Denver and the author of the Smotus Report newsletter (smotus.substack.com).聽
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