The Republican Party Has a Split-Personality Problem

There is a paradox at the heart of Donald Trump’s campaign, a potentially irreconcilable divide that could damage his potential new presidency right from the start.

The people who would make Trump president want different things from him, and those differences present political perils for Trump and also make it difficult to predict the contours of his second term. It could be just as extreme as millions of Americans rightly fear or it could be more moderate — with the deciding factor being Trump’s own sense of self-interest and personal grievance. And when Trump’s emotions ultimately dictate policy, it’s fair for Americans to be concerned about worst-case outcomes.

As we have all learned, Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters have become deeply radicalized, convinced that the nation is on the verge of extinction, in need of revolution. Even worse, they feel personally persecuted by a “uniparty” or “regime” that supposedly despises them and rejects their values. They want disruptive change, and if violence is necessary, so be it. As the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, put it recently, our country is “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

The Heritage Foundation is arguably America’s most powerful and influential right-wing think tank, and Roberts said those words on “War Room,” the podcast hosted by a former Trump adviser, Stephen K. Bannon. Bannon, however, didn’t host the interview. He’d reported to prison the day before to serve a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress. Before he entered the prison, he hosted a circuslike news conference that featured a who’s who of MAGA cranks and ideologues.

Bannon sounded the same themes as Roberts. “Victory or death,” he declared. “We either win or we’re going to have the death of a constitutional republic.”

But here’s the paradox I mentioned. If Trump does win again, it won’t be because of the MAGA revolutionaries. It will be because millions of his voters want the opposite of revolution. They want calm. They want the world to feel less dangerous, and they want milk and eggs and gasoline to cost less. These are the nostalgia voters, the people whose impressions of Trump’s presidency have improved since he left office, who long for the world of Jan. 1, 2020, when the economy was strong and the world seemed less chaotic.