Who Is Trump Reaching?
“The Republican Party is just a name,” Steve Bannon told me last week. I had called him to ask about the influence he believes his old boss still carries inside the GOP. “The bulk of it is a populist, nationalist party led by Donald Trump.” As for the rest of it? “The Republican Party, pre-2016, are the modern Whigs,” he added, referring to the national party that collapsed in the mid-19th century over divided views on slavery.
Bannon might not be the most reliable barometer of the political moment, but some of Trump’s fiercest Republican critics share his belief that the former president maintains a strong grip on his party. “He sparked this [movement], and now others are going ahead and taking the baton of batshittery,” Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois and a staunch Trump critic, told me last week.
Ahead of the midterm elections, the GOP seems to be casting about for an identity. If you open the National Republican Senatorial Committee website, you’ll see a slew of Trump-themed merch: an $18.75 T-shirt with a picture of Trump and a caption reading , a $4 decal with a picture of Trump: But when you click around to other parts of
