DON'T ASSUME THAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WILL COLLAPSE WITHOUT A CULT LEADER

In a New York Times roundtable discussion conducted after the fall of Viktor Orban, and also after a series of failures by J.D. Vance, David French says this about a possible end to our current political era:

French: Look, political eras do end, parties do reform, so when it comes to when will this era end, I feel confident it will at some point. I just don’t know when and how much damage will be done before it does. And that’s very much an open question. And I do think in JD Vance’s failures, we’re beginning to see maybe how this political era ends. Because the question has always been: Who is getting the baton from Donald Trump? Who is the next standard bearer?

And for a long time it’s been JD Vance. JD Vance is sort of the heir apparent, and he has been faceplanting time and time and time again.

And one way to think of his phase as a leader of the Republican Party is that he’s got all of the toxicity of Trump and none of that real charisma that Trump has. It’s charisma that I don’t fully understand. It’s never landed with me. Although I will say, early on I did enjoy “The Apprentice.” But it has never really landed with me, this hold, this charisma that he has. But one thing I know is that JD Vance does not have it. He just doesn’t have it.

Michelle Cottle replies:

Cottle: No, the man can’t order a donut without alienating people.

That's true. I get it. I really do. Vance is not loved. He or Marco Rubio could lose in a blowout two years from now, the way John McCain did in 2008.

Or he could be George H.W. Bush -- also an unloved, charisma-challenged successor to a beloved figure in the GOP. Bush wasn't the spiritual leader of the right on Election Day 1988. Nevertheless, he won 40 states and a 426-111 Electoral College blowout.

What this tells us is that the conservative movement can survive an uncharismatic leader, because the leader of the Republican Party and conservative movement doesn't have to be a GOP president or presidential candidate.

During that election, arguably, the leadership of the right passed into the hands of Lee Atwater, who ran the most vicious presidential campaign in living memory. Bush took control of the conservative movement during the Gulf War, but he was unpopular by 1992 and lost his reelection bid badly. By that time, however, power on the right was passing into the hands of Rush Limbaugh and his fellow radio talkers. Soon the leadership of the party would be shared with Newt Gingrich in the House. Eventually, it would settle on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, at the headquarters of Fox News.

The point is that the GOP can survive the loss of a charismatic leader. During periods without such a leader, the party might not control all of government, but even if a Democrat is in the White House, it will have the power to make his life miserable. Gingrich's congressional majorities did that to Bill Clinton. A generation later, the Tea Party's congressional majorities did that to Barack Obama. The Republican Party did just fine without an object of cult worship in the White House.

Democrats' mission in 2028 is to engineer a repeat of 2008 rather than 1988, but Democrats don't have a Barack Obama in their likely candidate field, so they're at risk of running a candidate who's mocked and othered the way Mike Dukakis was. You might think Vance is a national laughingstock, but he beat Gavin Newsom and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by 3 points each in an early-April survey from UMass-Lowell/YouGov.

But even after the 2008 election, the GOP regrouped, making a comeback with the help of the Murdoch media and the Koch-funded Tea Party movement. There was no Reagan then. There was no Trump. There was just lots and lots of right-wing billionaire cash and lots and lots of propaganda. After Trump, sadly, the GOP will be just fine.