Somehow, the 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign has been both thoroughly clarifying and utterly vapid. Apart from some minor disagreements that weren’t explored in depth, primary voters could easily conclude that there were almost no policy differences among the many candidates who ran. Yet with Donald Trump’s victory Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary, we have a clearer view than ever of the Republican electorate.
The GOP isn’t a monolith; it includes some voters who emphatically reject Trump and everything he represents and others who have some issues with him but will back him nonetheless in November. But by overwhelming margins, this isn’t just Donald Trump’s party; it’s a party of Trumpists, in which his support has only broadened and deepened as his rhetoric and his intentions become uglier and more mentally addled.
With each new indictment, each new piece of fascist rhetoric, each new racist outburst, Republican voters’ conviction that Trump should be their standard-bearer has only grown.
Republican voters had the opportunity to rally behind any one of many extremely conservative presidential candidates. A few were clowns, but most were experienced politicians whose commitment to the Republican cause couldn’t be questioned. To all of them, the party’s base said, “We want Trump.”
We’ve been told so many times that it’s unseemly to insult such voters. Their grievances are justified, their pain is real, and one shouldn’t condescend to them, lest they become even more radical (if such a thing were possible).
If anyone is tempted to wonder, “Who are these Trump voters, really?” the answer is that we already know. We know not because of the innumerable news stories in which they aired their grievances to respectful hearings; it seems like every diner in the entire Rust Belt has hosted a gaggle of reporters curious to view the Trump voter in his supposed native habitat. We know because with each new indictment, each…
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