... even as the presidential nominee, Trump won't redefine the Republican Party, McConnell says. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump predicted he would transform the GOP into a "worker's party" over the next five to 10 years.The GOP is never going to be a "workers' party," even if (white) workers vote for it en masse. The rest of the party -- i.e., the House and Senate members, the governors, the state legislators -- has no interest in doing right by workers. The Kochs and other donors want the exact opposite of what workers want.
"My view is that Trump will not change the Republican Party," McConnell says, describing it as "America's right-of-center party." "If he brings in new followers, that's great, and well worth the effort, but he will not change the Republican Party."
And Trump simply doesn't care. Yes, he talks a good game ... some of the time. For instance, when he thinks he can use the suggestion that the minimum wage should go up as chum in the water to attract Sanders voters, he hints at that kind of pro-worker stance; the rest of the time, he says wages are too high, or just right. The logical conclusion to draw from all this? He doesn't have a strong opinion about the minimum wage, so he'll happily follow the lead of Republicans in Congress. And we know they won't do what workers want.
It's going to be like that in a vast swath of areas: Trump will rubber-stamp whatever his party wants because he just doesn't care. He'll sign boilerplate Republican budgets and boilerplate Republican gun bills and boilerplate Republican abortion bills and boilerplate Republican deregulation bills and boilerplate Republican Obamacare repeal-but-not-replace bills. What does he care about? He cares about being America's alpha male; he probably cares about immigration and the wall, about screwing the Chinese, about kissing up to Vladimir Putin, about conveying a sense of muscularity, probably via his promised restoration of legalized torture and aggressive stance against ISIS. On quite a bit of this he's completely in sync with the rest of his party; on some, immigration in particular, he's in opposition to many members of the party, but very much in sync with others.
Trumpism, if it happens, will be standard-issue Reagan/Fox/Koch Republicanism -- which is bad enough -- with ugly Trump elements added. It won't be a big change in direction. It'll be the same-old same-old, but nastier. If McConnell thinks he and the party will be in their comfort zone in a Trump presidency, he's right.
