Over the past decade, President Donald Trump has built a precarious coalition around his own cult of personality. Conservative fiscal policy and resistance to social change, two pillars of the political right for decades, are no longer the primary hallmarks of the Republican Party. Irrational loyalty to the president, above all, is the force unifying the GOP in 2026.
To explain this transition, the shunned Republican old guard will point to two distinct parties: one before Trump and one after.
In many ways, this is a sensible assessment. It is undeniable that Trump has been an inflection point for the party, driving it away from respecting democratic institutions and norms and toward embracing outright authoritarianism.
History will remember the president for this, but a complete and honest portrayal of the GOP’s anti-democratic trajectory will also see those who came before him as equally culpable.
Old-guard Republicans can try and absolve themselves of their responsibility in creating Trumpism, but the president and his style of politics are not some historical anomaly foreign to the pre-Trump Republican Party. GOP actors before MAGA took hold were instrumental in building a party that made Trump’s rise possible.