From the very first speech delivered by Kamala Harris in her short-lived presidential run, her campaign was defined by a simple catchphrase that regularly elicited thunderous applause from rallygoers, left-wing pundits, and the Democrat Party faithful: “We are not going back.”
The slogan, meant to assure her supporters that Donald Trump’s political movement was a thing of the past, has been reprinted on t-shirts and bumper stickers, and was repeatedly chanted by her supporters at campaign events.
In a sense Kamala Harris was right—just not in the way that she had hoped.
One of the most important conclusions that can be drawn from Trump’s overwhelming victory is that the Republican Party is “not going back” to the GOP of yesteryear. The America First agenda is now firmly the dominant ideological force in the party, and the old guard establishment is in what looks to be a terminal decline.
Prior to Trump’s arrival in the national political spotlight, most Republican candidates and officeholders had fallen into ignoring the needs and values of the Americans they claimed to represent. Inflexibly attached to a rigid free market platform (referred to by some as “consensus conservatism”) that dismissed social and cultural concerns as either too divisive or otherwise not worthy of their attention, the Republicans of the pre-Trump era were a movement without a base.
Even prior to his victory last week, the influence of President Donald Trump’s pro-worker, tough-on-crime, tough-on-immigration, culture war-oriented platform could hardly be overstated. His 2016 victory shook the foundations of the Republican Party establishment. His 2024 comeback just shattered it.
By delivering Donald Trump not only a whopping 312 electoral point victory, but also a win in the popular vote, the American people have loudly rejected both the old consensus of the Republican Party and the social, cultural, and political overreaches of the modern Democrat Party. In doing so, Trump and the voters that elected him have ushered in an era of political realignment that has reinvigorated the conservative movement and breathed new life into the GOP.
According to exit polls, Trump was backed by racial minorities by a historically unprecedented margin. He improved his standing with young, black, and Hispanic voters. He won the American Indian population with a stunning 64 percent of the vote. And he won Catholics by a 15 percent margin, evangelicals by a 25 percent margin, and gained significantly among Jewish voters.
Meanwhile, Trump became the first Republican to win Miami-Dade County in Florida and Bucks County in Pennsylvania since George H.W. Bush in 1988. He flipped African American-heavy counties in states like Georgia. He improved his percent of the vote in every state save two compared to 2020.
Additionally, throughout the campaign, Trump spearheaded voter outreach initiatives to groups and organizations that have not been traditionally affiliated with Republican politics or conservative policies. And he won the endorsements of former Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, who said the Democrat Party had grown too extreme and out of touch with the needs of Americans.
In July, Trump spoke at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville, where he proposed the creation of a Strategic National Bitcoin Stockpile. He has also notably joined forces with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who hosted Trump for an interview on his X platform, drawing in tens of millions of views and billions of impressions.
Trump has also appeared on a wide array of cultural and political podcasts—including on “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von”—signaling his desire to reach new, younger audiences who had typically failed to turn out for Republicans.
Furthermore, in May, Trump made history by becoming the first president to ever speak at the Libertarian Party’s National Convention. He attended roundtables with business leaders, addressed San Francisco fundraisers with Silicon Valley donors, and held massive rallies in the Democrat strongholds of Philadelphia, New York City, Coachella, California, and Wildwood, New Jersey. Also this year, Trump hosted a community roundtable discussion at a black church in Detroit in a pitch to black voters.
Thanks to these historic campaign initiatives and breakthroughs with voters, Trump delivered not only a victory, but a mandate that will likely realign American electoral politics for the foreseeable future.
As a result, the “Never Trump” coalition of the old Republican Party – now represented by disgraced groups like the Lincoln Project and increasingly pathetic publications like The Bulwark – are now just as defeated and demoralized as the Democrat Party. As Scott Jennings observed on CNN on Election Night, “this ‘Never-Trump’ whole complex that grew over the last several years, nothing has ever failed as hard in politics as this.”
He continued: “The Lincoln Project, all these people that bilked millions upon millions upon millions of dollars from Democratic donors, and all the eggs that [were] put in this basket. The split was amazing. Trump got like 94 percent of Republicans. I don’t think they accomplished anything, except probably build a bunch of beach houses. That’s about what they did. Republicans being lectured to, condescended to, browbeaten by all these folks over the last—look, at some juncture, it’s okay if we have different opinions about the election. You don’t have to beat people to death over it. And the more you do that, the more it drives people away. Total failure.”
Following Donald Trump’s blowout victory on November 5th, the Republican Party is not going back. The party—and the country—will be better off for it.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
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