The Commons: Stop Trying to Understand Trump Voters as if They Are Aliens

Although the various articles in the “If Trump Wins” issue may have been accurate, I fear they didn’t go far enough in analyzing the real problem: the Republican Party. Few of Donald Trump’s successes as president could have been accomplished without the full support of nearly the entire GOP. Few of Trump’s second-term goals will be realized without full Republican support. The United States doesn’t have a Trump problem; it has a Republican problem. He is merely the latest and perhaps most powerful Republican voice calling for the end of the modern federal government, a position favored by many Republicans since President Ronald Reagan and Grover Norquist. The assaults on government, civil rights, and democratic norms that this issue so ably describes will continue with or without Trump as long as modern Republicans control any levers of government.