Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party in Nashua, N.H., on Jan. 23.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press
It’s his party now.
Donald Trump rolled to victory here in New Hampshire, but the more important message to emerge from the Granite State may be that the Republican Party, indisputably and perhaps irrevocably, now is fully a Trump party.
Until now, this notion has been pure theory. Until now, Mr. Trump could have been viewed as a colourful interloper in a party known for steady habits, good manners and quiet conservatism. Until now, he could have been viewed as a passing phenomenon.
Ordinarily presidents come and go, leading their party while in the White House but, aside from de rigueur salutes at party functions, disappearing from their party’s identity. The Democrats weren’t a Bill Clinton party after he left the presidency, no more than the Republicans were a George W. Bush party after he retired from politics.
But four years after he was defeated by Joe Biden, the Republicans have taken on the political colour and character of Mr. Trump.
The proof: if Mr. Trump were to be upended, and if a candidate like former governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina were to prevail anywhere, it would be in a place like New Hampshire, where the phrase Deep Purple reflects the state’s political makeup rather than a 1960s British rock group.
“This is a state that has become moderate, almost liberal,” said former GOP state senator Mark Hounsell, whose family has been active in New Hampshire politics since the 18th century. “By winning in New Hampshire, it is a big story beyond the borders of the state.”
The big story: New Hampshire didn’t upend the verdict of Iowa, as it often does. Moderates didn’t push Ms. Haley closer than about 11 percentage points.
David Shribman: After Trump triumph in New Hampshire, the matchup nobody wants looms large
While Ms. Haley did well in the final tabulation, perhaps the most significant element of Tuesday’s primary vote came from polls showing that 70 per cent of Mr. Trump’s haul of votes came from Republicans, not from the independents who were eligible to vote in the primary. Only 27 per cent of Ms. Haley’s votes came from Republicans.
Her apparent wager: remain in the race long enough so that she is the party’s front-runner if Mr. Trump is convicted in court. Two-fifths of New Hampshire voters said they would flee from Mr. Trump in that event.
That is just the sort of hypothetical Ronald Reagan tried to ban from political discourse.
“Trump’s the establishment of our party,” said Jim Merrill, a top strategist for the New Hampshire candidacies of Governor George W. Bush of Texas, former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. “By winning here he’s clearly the party leader.”
Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, said Ms. Haley’s failure could be attributed to her dependence on voters who no longer are the Republican majority. “She hasn’t been getting supporters of the new Republican brand,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s role as the establishment figure in the Republican Party is reflected in the remarkable lineup of elected officials in what Ms. Haley Tuesday night called “my sweet state of South Carolina“ who have lined up behind him.
They include state House Speaker Ronald Smith, who held a fundraiser for Ms. Haley when she ran for governor, and Senator Tim Scott, who withdrew from the presidential campaign in November and endorsed Mr. Trump even though Ms. Haley appointed him to fill a Senate vacancy in 2013.
“You can’t have President Trump policies,” said Pamela Sue Evette, South Carolina’s lieutenant governor, “without President Trump.”
There are few examples of a single political figure remaking a political party in modern times.
Neither of the two presidents Bush did it; in the perspective of the passing decades it is clear that both were transitional presidents. For all his charisma, John F. Kennedy didn’t do it either. Theodore Roosevelt temporarily transformed the business-oriented Republicans into a vanguard of reform at the beginning of the 20th century. His cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, transformed the Democrats from a small-government party into an activist-government profile with the New Deal beginning with his 1932 campaign.
No others come close.
Now the Republicans – until the advent of Mr. Trump in 2015 incontestably known as the party of the establishment – may be in the unusual position of having an insurgent as an establishment figure.
“Trump understood where the Republican base was on issues, especially immigration,” said Andrew Smith, the political scientist who heads the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, “and ran to the front of the parade.”
It is an astonishing achievement, a man with neither political nor military experience taking firm control of a party whose previous nominees have held major political offices and have served in the military. Since 1960, the Republicans have nominated for president in years without incumbents four vice-presidents, three governors and three senators. Every GOP nominee from 1960 to 2008 served in one of the military services or the national guard.
Yet for Mr. Trump, danger signs remain.
He has alienated the donor class that flocked to Ms. Haley, likely removing them (and the voters who were the object of their appeals) from the GOP coalition in the November election.
Moreover, 19 per cent of Republicans who voted Tuesday – a mirror of the sentiment in Iowa last week – said they would not support the former president in November. Denied those voters nationwide and here, still regarded as a battleground for the general election, makes the GOP struggle against Mr. Biden an uphill battle.
“It’s his party, and I’ll cry if I want to,” said former state attorney-general Thomas Rath, who was active in the campaigns of Bob Dole, George W. Bush and Mr. Romney. “The party has become so insular – so Trump-like – that it doesn’t brook any alternative views. It is a party designed to lose.”