If Trumpism as a political movement wants to retain its economic nationalism, it has to pitch itself to an audience larger than the white working class, perhaps something like what political writer Will Rahn called, “rainbow nationalism.” That means putting the emphasis on attacking economic elites and corruption in government, while championing the economic interests of working Americans who want to see their Medicare and Social Security benefits saved, not slashed.
The other way Trumpism could mutate is is to do a better job assimilating all the parts of the Republican Party that feel uncomfortable with the conservative movement. Although its chief expositors live in the Beltway, in the rest of the country, the conservative movement is a creature of the exurbs, doing occasional sorties into other parts of America via SUV. Trump has found his strongest support elsewhere: in the nationalist right of the South, in the working class of coal country, and among the kind of Northeast Republicans who find the evangelical personality within conservatism slightly off-putting. Political ideas are pliable enough to create some kind of ideology that connects these voters to each other. But what would it be?
These possible mutations have something in common: They are both rather far-fetched. While global trends may eventually push the Republican Party away from the business class and towards nationalists on immigration restriction, the rest of Trumpism seems bound to go into abeyance.
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