This is a useful moment for Republicans, because it challenges all of their prior assumptions about the form a Trump return would take. There is an alt-fiction version in which Trump returns as a triumphant unifying force. Having bent the party establishment to his will against their protestations, this Trump could ride into the 2024 nomination as the one who could unite the various strands of the coalition by dint of his past success and promises kept.
That was always a fantasy. A vindictive Trump, one who feels maligned by the success of other Republicans as opposed to built up by it, was always going to be the nature of his return. His greatest policy success was thanks to Paul Ryan’s tax plan — and he hates him. His greatest domestic legacy is transforming the judiciary thanks to Mitch McConnell’s nominee advancement — and he hates him. His greatest foreign policy legacy is the Abraham Accords and upending the assumptions regarding Israel in the Middle East thanks to Jared Kushner — and, well, I don’t know that he hates his son-in-law but he sure doesn’t seem very grateful for it.
Nothing should surprise us about this. There’s a reason that firing away at Glenn Youngkin with a flat racial joke looks pathetic — because it is. Youngkin owes Trump nothing, nothing at all — and deep down, Trump knows this. He was never going to be OK with a GOP that doesn’t need him to succeed, and in fact views his role as a major drag on its candidates. The people who went all-in on Trump as the Once and Future King are his only friends at this point — and they have been very quiet in the past seventy-two hours. The idea espoused by those closest to him that he has a right to the nomination this time wears thinner every day.
Election Day showed what kind of conservatism can win: a populist agenda paired with strength and competence in governance. It’s not more complicated than that.
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