WAIT -- ARE PUNDITS STILL ARGUING THAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS DYING?

I didn't intend this to be Pick On Jamelle Bouie Week, but in his latest column he argues that the Republican Party is weak and dying -- yes, even now. That's preposterous.

Bouie correctly notes that many of Donald Trump's appointees probably wouldn't have been chosen by another Republican -- Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert Kennedy Jr., Dr. Oz. Trump's appointee list includes many Fox on-air personalities. Bouie writes that Trump has chosen

a team with shockingly little governing experience and almost no connection to the institutional Republican Party.... Trump is not picking from within the broad universe of the Republican Party....

But Fox News is at the center of "the broad universe of the Republican Party" -- it's no surprise that Fox employees and frequent Fox guests will serve in Trump's Cabinet.

It's true that these people aren't lifelong Republican loyalists. And this is undeniably true:

The Republican Party could wither and die, and Donald Trump would not care, provided it did not disrupt his ability to enrich himself and his family.

But that doesn't mean the GOP is weak. Bouie misunderstands what really matters to the party, somehow imagining that governance is what matters, because political scientists say that's what matters to parties:

This dynamic ... underscores one of the most important — and yet under-remarked on — elements of the Republican Party in the age of Trump: its fundamental political impairment.... the Republican Party is, to use a recent term of art, hollow. “At the heart of hollowness lies parties’ incapacity to meet public challenges,” Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld observe in “The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics.”

But the Republican Party doesn't care about its capacity "to meet public challenges," and hasn't cared since at least the 1980s. Here's what the Republican Party cares about: gaining power often enough to keep making the rich richer and less regulated and taxed, particularly rich people who make their money from fossil fuels, a source of energy for which the GOP is determined to preserve primacy until the end of recorded time. Oil and plutocracy -- that's what the GOP cares about, not meeting "public challenges."

Bouie writes:

The institutions of the Republican Party — the establishment, as it were — have no capacity to influence, shape or discipline any of the actors who operate under the Republican umbrella.

Really? During Trump's first term, "the establishment" handed him a Paul Ryan-style tax cut for the rich, and he dutifully signed it into law. He'll save that tax cut in his second term, and probably add on another one.

Beyond that, Bouie misunderstands what the Republican "establishment" is. Right now it's ideologues who hate DEI and trans people, and they've made Trump care about these issues, too. (Don't forget during the 2016 campaign Trump publicly waved a Pride flag and said that Caitlyn Jenner could use the bathroom of her choice at Trump Tower. Now he plans to reinstate his first-term ban on transgender troops and might discharge all trans troops immediately upon taking office.)

The present-day Republican establishment focuses on issues like these because they keep the rubes voting for the GOP, the party guaranteed to give the rich more money and less regulation.

Bouie continues:

To the extent that there is anything left of a national ideological or programmatic agenda, it is a reflection either of Trump’s idiosyncratic preoccupations or those of the cadres of ideologues who have opportunistically latched on to the incoming president.

State abortion bans aren't part of "a national ideological or programmatic agenda"? Shipping immigrants to blue states, as Republican governors did in recent years, isn't part of "a national ideological or programmatic agenda"? What about bans on trans heathcare for minors? Or school library book bans? Or abstinence-only school sex education curricula?

Yes, these issues are being pushed by "cadres of ideologues," but those ideologues are the Republican Party now, and they would have "latched on to" any Republican presidential nominee. (Go read my post from last December about Nikki Haley's interest in many of the ideas of Project 2025.)

All of this is why Bouie is completely wrong to imagine a dying GOP in Trump's absence:

... consider the very plausible world in which Trump lost his bid for a second term. A two-time loser, he would have been a clear burden on the party’s ability to win. If he leaves or is forced out of the political scene, what happens to the Republican Party? Does it quickly reshape itself? Or does it enter a period of terminal crisis now that it is bereft of a figure who organized its priorities for nearly a decade?

But Fox, Chris Rufo, Leonard Leo, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, and Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok have also been important organizers of the GOP's priorities in the past decade. Of course the party would regroup.

In the absence of Trump, does the Republican Party look like an entity that can build or mobilize anything like a working electoral majority?

Polling during primary season showed Nikki Haley with a bigger lead over Joe Biden than Trump's.

Even now, in this world, it is clear that the president-elect’s appeal is distinct from that of his party; Republicans lost four Senate races in states that he won and the party’s House majority teeters on a knife’s edge.

Republicans lost Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin by less than a point; they lost the Nevada race by less than two points, and the Arizona race by two and a half -- and, of course, they flipped Democratic Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia. At the state level, 27 out of 50 governors are Republican. And at the state legislative level:

Bouie concludes:

The weakness of the institutional Republican Party, the fragility of the Republican majorities, and the volatility of Trump himself are a recipe for political instability and chaos. It all serves as a reminder that whenever Trump does leave the scene, he will likely leave behind a Republican Party that will struggle to find an identity outside of his reach and influence.

Not as long as the right-wing media exists and conservative billionaires still have enough fingers to sign fat checks.

No one should assume that the GOP will be a spent force when Trump is gone. We still have to learn how to beat it -- assuming America remains a legitimate democracy in which beating the GOP is possible.