What’s Next for the GOP After Trump? Get Ready for 31 Flavors of MAGA. |
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Donald Trump is one of the most consequential figures in American history. What happens after he is gone?
2028 will be the first presidential election since 2012 in which Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee for president. (Despite some trolling on this topic from the MAGA right, the Constitution is pretty clear on this.)
The extent to which he has reshaped U.S. politics and society is rivaled by few of his predecessors; presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Trump will leave behind an American political system molded by him. Both political parties are bound together by him—the Republican coalition by loyalty to Trump; the Democratic one, by revulsion of him. However, those coalitions will be tested in a presidential election without the incumbent on the ballot, a moment that is growing closer every day.
Trump’s dominance over the GOP—he has gone beyond building a political movement to establishing a full-on cult of personality—was on full display at the Conservative Political Action Conference, held in suburban Dallas late last month. The president did not deign to make an appearance at the annual conservative confab, but Trump gear was the go-to wear for attendees.
There was no one sporting J.D. Vance getups or Marco Rubio costumes, let alone decked out in Ted Cruz–themed bling or Rand Paul merch. The only other American conservative political figure with whom there was any competition was Charlie Kirk, the right-wing media personality assassinated last year.
Although there was the traditional straw poll to measure whom attendees preferred in the 2028 Republican primary, it felt like an afterthought at an event that, in recent years, has been focused on appealing to Trump’s most loyal acolytes in the GOP. As attendees roamed the corridors of the suburban Dallas resort and gossiped over drinks in the faux-adobe sports bar, there was no sense of a coming contest. And from the speakers onstage, there was no urgency toward looking to any future beyond the midterms, for which the concern was all about protecting Trump from yet another impeachment.
Trump’s stature as a political leviathan is due to his shaping of not just the Republican Party but the Democratic Party as well. There’s certainly no going back to pre-Trump politics. After all, the Never Trumpers have long since left the GOP, and many of the MAGA-curious have deserted the Democrats.
He even had this stature in the 2024 Republican primary, when he was a candidate, as even those running against him still bent over backward to avoid direct criticism of their leading opponent. Instead, invariably, they merely noted that they offered some version of Trump without the drama (an oblique way of referring to the multitude of criminal investigations against the then-former president, as well as his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, without explicitly saying it).
“He’s unique,” said Martin Bertao, who had come to CPAC from UC–Berkeley, not a typical home base for conference attendees. “He’s the reason that, really, our party is where we are today, and the energy is where it’s at.”
When asked about 2028, his friend Ben Corbett, who had gone to UC–Santa Barbara, bristled at even the suggestion that the incumbent was a lame duck and that it was already time to look to the future. “He basically has more power, insofar as implicating the policy and effectively governing in a way that will achieve the things that he ran on, such as the mass deportations and everything else,” he said.
For Corbett, the MAGA movement would simply continue to “look like the youth. It looks like what it is currently. We’re just gonna get a little bit older.”
Certainly, the movement will continue to dominate the Republican Party. The 2028 field will likely resemble a political Baskin-Robbins, with 31 different flavors of Trumpism available. This starts with Vance, who as vice president would be Trump’s logical successor and is already considered to be the favorite for the 2028 nomination.
But there will be flavors for all comers, helped along by the fact that Trumpism as a political philosophy is often a choose-your-own-adventure on most topics, save tariffs and perhaps the NFL’s new dynamic kickoff rule.
If you like that Trump has been bombing Iran, you might opt for Tom Cotton should he run. In contrast, if you prefer the version of Trump who is isolationist, you might lean toward Steve Bannon.
On social issues, if you are enthused by Trump’s appointment of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, Josh Hawley might be more your speed. But if you admire Trump’s efforts to de-emphasize social issues, Glenn Youngkin could be your top choice.
And, of course, the race to succeed Trump will happen in an environment in which the incumbent president not only shapes Republican primaries; his endorsement will almost single-handedly determine the winners and losers. Certainly, there is a path for a Republican deeply critical of Trump in 2028. However, their ultimate destination is not the White House but a cable-news greenroom.
To the extent that attendees at CPAC were focused on the succession at all outside a casual vote in the straw poll (Vance won but was followed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio), the vice president captured their attention for now. But the conference was far removed from the atmosphere a decade ago, when, ahead of the open 2016 presidential race, loyalist supporters of various candidates showed up to sway the straw poll, a measure that was then perceived to be influential. (Rand Paul won all three contests before the 2016 primary, buoyed by the support of droves of libertarian students who descended upon the suburban Washington conference center where the event was then held.)
When asked about the next presidential contest, Josiah Baker, who was dressed in an American-flag suit and a broad-brimmed black hat, sang Vance’s praises. Baker, who had come to the Texas conference from Richmond Hill, Georgia, thought that the vice president was “definitely going to be the next candidate.”
Baker conceded that Vance might be “less popular with the older folks” but thought he could be even more liked than Trump with younger people like him.
“He’s very, very good at speaking,” Baker said. “He has the same beliefs and political views as me. It’s basically the same as Trump, and I would definitely go for him.”
Things Are Looking Quite Bad for Trump
But Vance didn’t inspire the same fanaticism as Trump. After all, Vance is still just another politician. He’s neither a television celebrity nor a cultural icon. And although Republican operatives uniformly give him the inside track to the nomination if he chooses to run, it’s by no means a sure thing.
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After all, George H.W. Bush faced a ferocious primary trying to replace Ronald Reagan as his vice president, and Barack Obama’s anointed successor clearly didn’t have the smoothest run for the nomination in 2016.
Certainly, the more political capital Trump puts behind a Vance primary campaign, the easier it is for the Ohio Republican to win the nomination. But it also makes it that much harder for him to escape Trump’s shadow—especially considering that even if Trump is a lame duck in 2028, his Truth Social account will doubtless be just as active as ever.
Not everyone at CPAC, though, was interested in speculation about 2028. Brendon Fellows, a convicted Jan. 6 rioter who attended the conference dressed up as an ICE agent, told Slate that none of it really mattered in the long run. “Eventually, inevitably, this country and the world are going down. Trump helps slow it down and helps preserve America,” he said.
Fellows added: “I certainly don’t think we’ll be here another 250 years. We’re already at an accelerated rate compared to the Roman Empire of our deterioration. So I would love for it not to fall apart, but yeah, I’m just being realistic.”
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