OPINION
“No one knows what I’m going to do!” Trump grinned on June 19 when asked about possible plans for strikes on Iran. It was a unique moment in U.S. history: a decision as critical as whether the country goes to war depended entirely on the mood of a single person. But that’s the reality of modern America. Trump has successfully taken control of the Republican Party, reshaping it into a leader-centric party — a structure wholly incompatible with the country’s democratic traditions. The flip side of this one-man rule is the absence of a shared ideological platform inside the party of power itself, and internal disagreements have already begun to surface over issues like the new budget and the war with Iran. Before these divisions tear the party apart, Republicans must decide what binds them together — apart from allegiance to a single leader whose eligibility to serve as President of the United States will expire at the end of his current term.
Both major U.S. political parties have their icons. For the Democrats, it’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt — the president who led the country out of the Great Depression, secured victory in World War II, established Social Security, and radically expanded the role of the federal government. He also broke the unwritten two-term rule, winning election four times, and even threatened to double the size of the Supreme Court by appointing new justices if the judicial branch continued to declare his initiatives unconstitutional.
In recent years, the Republican idol had been Ronald Reagan, who united religious conservatives, anti-communists, and big business into a dominant electoral coalition. The Gipper laid the foundation for a new economic course centered on deregulation and tax cuts, and in foreign policy, he took a hardline stance against the socialist bloc, leading the U.S. to victory over the USSR in the Cold War.
But both Roosevelt and Reagan earned their iconic status only after leaving office — or even after death. Other American presidents, while enjoying strong support within their parties, were seen by fellow politicians more as first among equals, with their hold on power understood to be temporary.
Never before in U.S. history has a sitting or former president become an object of cult-like devotion within his own party in the way that Donald Trump now is. Calls to let him run for a third term, to make his birthday a national holiday, to carve his face into Mount Rushmore or onto a new $250 bill — these are not headlines from satirical outlet The Onion, but actual proposals and bills introduced by Republican members of Congress.
At a recent cabinet meeting at the White House, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called the current administration the greatest in history and described the president as “not just courageous, but actually fearless.” Attorney General Pam Bondi echoed the praise, claiming Trump’s first hundred days in office “far exceeded that of any other presidency” and that she had “never seen anything like it.” Vice President J.D. Vance, for his part, criticized most of Trump’s predecessors — including Ronald Reagan, James Madison, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, whose portraits hang in the Oval Office — saying they were merely “caretakers,” not “men of action” like the current occupant of the White House.
Trump himself eagerly plays along to this flattery, teasing the idea of a third term and posting images on social media depicting himself wearing a royal crown. Republicans respond with jokes, saying the president should be taken “seriously, but not literally.” That’s why they are unfazed by his attacks on American universities, his decision to deploy the military to Los Angeles, or his calls to annex Greenland, Canada, and the Gaza Strip,
They eagerly vote to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “American Gulf,” and back both the introduction and suspension — and then cancellation — of tariffs. Anyone who disagrees is viewed as an enemy of the president — from California Democratic Senator Alex Padilla, who was handcuffed for trying to question a cabinet member, to judges who rule the White House’s actions unlawful.
To President Trump’s critics, this picture increasingly resembles an authoritarian regime whose ruler heads up a cult of personality. And those critics aren’t limited to liberal activists or Democratic politicians. “Would it be possible to have a cabinet meeting without the Kim Jong il-style tributes?” asked conservative columnist Ann Coulter, who is hardly a fan of the Democratic Party.
The godfather of the party
How did the Republican Party — which for decades championed traditional values, individual liberties, and the principle of limited federal interference in state affairs — end up under the leadership of a man who can hardly be described as a devout Christian and whose governing style political scientists call authoritarian?
This trajectory was by no means inevitable. Just nine years ago, Republicans stood at a crossroads: after Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012 at the hands of Barack Obama, the party was unsure of its next move. Conservatives like Texas Senator Ted Cruz offered the classic Reaganite formula: opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, support for tax cuts, deregulation, and reduced government spending. More moderate figures, such as presidential dynasty heir Jeb Bush, pushed for outreach to the growing Latino electorate by softening the party’s anti-immigration rhetoric.
All of these discussions, however, were swiftly shut down by Donald Trump — a New York billionaire and reality TV star — when he stormed into the Republican presidential primaries. A political outsider, Trump blamed the party’s woes on its own leaders, accusing them of betraying their voters. Chief among his targets was former President George W. Bush, whom Trump criticized for launching the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He didn’t hesitate to break with Republican orthodoxy, promising to leave popular social programs untouched and advancing a radical anti-immigration agenda that included building a wall along the border with Mexico.
Trump’s contradictions, brazenness, macho swagger, disdain for political correctness, and biting sense of humor appealed to Republican voters. They saw Trump as a walking rebuke to a corrupt and broken system. The very traits that repelled his critics became, for his supporters, proof of his authenticity and incorruptibility.
Trump fiercely attacked his primary rivals, dubbing Ted Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted” and then-Florida Senator Marco Rubio as “Little Marco.” This infuriated traditional Republicans. At the time, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” and the “ISIL man of the year,” while J.D. Vance likened him to “cultural heroin” and even offered up comparisons to Adolf Hitler. Today, Graham and Cruz rank among Trump’s staunchest allies in the Senate, while Vance and Rubio serve as vice president and secretary of state in his current administration.
Many Republicans who wanted to remain in politics ultimately had to make the same rhetorical journey from rejection to loyalty, but not all of them embarked on it immediately. Even after Trump’s unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, Republican congressional leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell continued to be openly critical of Trump, and prominent Republicans including Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker never made peace with the new political reality. Out of all of those named above, only McConnell still holds elected office.
As his hold on power over the party’s base grew, Trump demanded ever greater displays of loyalty from his fellow Republicans. His first Vice President, Mike Pence refused to help him overturn the results of the 2020 election and faded into political oblivion after a brief presidential bid. Ryan too left politics under threat of a revolt by Trumpist lawmakers. Even McConnell stepped down from his role as Senate leader.
The worst fate befell those who openly opposed Trump. Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who condemned the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot and voted to impeach him, were ousted from the party. As if that were not punishment enough, Trump repeatedly called for them to be criminally prosecuted.
Republicans who condemned the Capitol attack were expelled from the party
Some Republicans held out hope that Trump’s scandal-ridden exit from the White House and the party’s poor showing in the 2022 midterms would allow them to move on from the former president and find a new leader. Those hopes were dashed by three criminal indictments against Trump, which cast him as a victim and undermined his main rivals in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
Trump easily won the party’s nomination, fully solidifying the fact that the GOP was his. After an assassination attempt in the summer of 2024, that bond only grew stronger: Trump was elevated to a quasi-religious figure, saved by God to fulfill his mission. His victory over Democrat Kamala Harris sealed his image inside the movement as that of a hero willing to risk his fortune, his freedom, and even his life.
Trumpism without Trump?
But personal loyalty to Trump as a prerequisite for political survival in the Republican Party is only part of the story. Trump has in fact radically reshaped the GOP, steering it away from its traditional Reagan-era course.
The old ideas of making compromises on immigration reform or of offering amnesty to certain categories of undocumented immigrants has given way to the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history. The principle of free trade was abandoned in favor of massive tariffs aimed at bringing lost industry back to the United States. And the aggressive neoconserve foreign policy of the post-Cold War era — with its focus on spreading democracy — appears to have all but vanished. The new foreign policy lacks any values-driven component and instead resembles the “spheres of influence” approach of 19th-century great-power geopolitics.
As the Republican Party under Trump shifted in a more populist and nationalist direction, its electoral coalition also began to change. College-educated Americans and affluent suburban voters — once the backbone of the conservative electorate — have switched over to the Democrats. In 2016, Trump offset those losses by winning over white voters without college degrees, as well as disaffected independents who had long stayed away from the polls. In 2024, he expanded his coalition by drawing in young male voters — many of them Hispanic and Black — who had grown frustrated by Joe Biden’s presidency.
The future of this coalition will largely depend on the results of Trump’s policies. If mass deportations, rising prices, and economic troubles caused by new tariffs lead to growing discontent among moderates and voters of color, Republicans will have a hard time holding on to the White House in 2028.
And next time, they won’t have Trump — a figure who energizes his base like no other. Many Republicans who have tried in recent years to imitate Trump’s style and rhetoric have fallen flat — lacking his peculiar brand of charisma, they tend to repel more voters than they attract.
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio
When Trump was asked whether he saw Vice President Vance as his successor and the Republican presidential candidate for 2028, the president said that it was still too early for such speculation. And although Trump is currently barred from running for a third term, it is clear he has no intention to cede influence by naming a successor — and he may yet prove capable of retaining that influence over the party even after leaving the White House.
Still, for now at least, Vance appears to be the obvious heir to Trump’s legacy. Unlike Secretary of State Rubio, who is also seen as a potential future presidential contender, Vance genuinely shares many of the core tenets of Trumpism — both in foreign and domestic policy.
Still, Vance and Rubio can only inherit the presidency if Trump’s second term is seen as a success. If his administration fails to meet the expectations of most Americans, Republicans may look for a candidate outside the current administration, and in that case, the winning approach could look very different from the one Trump has used to win the party’s past three presidential nominations.
Cracks are already beginning to show within Trump’s political coalition, with disagreements surfacing on key issues ranging from budget cuts to U.S. involvement in bombing Iran. The Republican primaries ahead of the 2026 congressional elections will reveal whether these are merely temporary disagreements with the White House or signs of a deeper, more fundamental rift. But even if Trump manages to hold the party together for the next three-plus years, his successors will have a much harder time navigating the divide between the party’s moderate and conservative wings. What’s clear is that none of the potential candidates enjoys the level of control over the party that the current president does. Trumpism as a mode of governance will not outlive the man who gave it his name, and Republicans are already being forced to consider what — if anything — can unite them after their current cult idol is gone.