The Republican Monolith is Back

They found their messaging mojo, and all it took was a criminal conviction.

Everyone is singing in unison. (Photo by Utah Reps)

Since Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, Republicans have fallen all over each other to demonstrate their loyalty to him and their eagerness to repeat his messages as they discuss this momentous event. The trial was rigged, they say, the justice system is corrupt, Joe Biden targeted Trump, government is being weaponized, et cetera, et cetera. This may seem completely predictable; we know how loyal the party is to him and how unconstrained they are by either the facts or any commitment to democratic institutions.

But there’s something important going on, something easy to miss: All but the barest hint of internal disagreement in the GOP has been silenced. A party that has been riven by venomous internecine warfare in recent years is speaking as one again. 

The Monolith is back. 

If you’ve only been paying attention to politics for the last 15 years or so, you may think of the Republican Party as fractious and unruly, a collection of people who are regularly at each other’s throats as establishment shills and far-right nutballs snipe bitterly at one another. It’s a party that stumbles drunkenly about, forcing the government into a series of budget crises and losing elections they ought to win. 

But that’s a relatively recent development. Not long ago, liberals looked at the GOP with grudging admiration, seeing in its ruthless message discipline and unanimity of purpose something Democrats only wished they could emulate. That monolithic Republican Party has returned. As chaotic as the Trump era in Republican politics has been, the fractiousness may finally be falling away. The fact that their leader is now a convicted felon has at last brought them harmony and consensus. 

How it used to be

When I first began studying media and politics many years ago, there was a striking difference between the two parties in how they approached the news media (this was before social media existed) and through them, the public. Both sides had plenty of internal divisions and factions with differing priorities, and that was reflected in Democratic messaging, which had no consistency at all. Whenever a debate was in progress, every elected Democrat and liberal advocate would have their own ideas that they would want to communicate in the way they decided to communicate them. The result was often cacophony.

On the other side, Republicans were a monolith. Whenever some new controversy erupted, every single Republican repeated the same simple, easily understood message, using the same language. If they wanted to convince people that, for instance, a new Democratic tax plan was bad and should be defeated, they’d decide to say that it was going to cause a “job-killing recession.” Then they would make sure everyone on their side understood that the thing they were all supposed to say was “This tax hike will cause a job-killing recession,” and say it over and over again. Which they would do. 

If you want to persuade a largely inattentive public, simplicity and repetition are essential. The fact that only one side seemed to understand that contributed to a long string of Republican victories and Democratic defeats. In 2006 I wrote a book called Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success, begging Democrats to get their act together when it came to the way they communicated to the public. But just knowing what your party should do isn’t enough either. 

There were two factors that enabled Republicans to create that unified public face. The first was a system of coordination, a practical, day-to-day way for everyone on their side to know what they’re supposed to say. The Republican eagerness to coordinate was embodied in a weekly meeting held in the offices of Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group established by Grover Norquist. This New Yorker article from 2005 describes the events:

On Wednesday mornings, Norquist hosts an off-the-record gathering of conservative activists that has evolved into a wide-ranging forum for members of Congress, Capitol Hill staffers, single-issue campaigners, journalists, policy wonks, and corporate lobbyists. Karl Rove shows up every few months, and other Administration officials attend on a regular basis. The “Wednesday meeting,” as it is known, has become so popular that Norquist’s friend John Fund, a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, has christened him the Grand Central Station of conservatism.

The purpose was to reinforce relationships, set an agenda for the movement, and coordinate messages. It seems like basic politics, but at the time it was revolutionary. Democrats had nothing comparable. 

They tried to emulate it — I even went to a few such meetings in the mid-2000s that various groups put together — but the effort was hampered by the fact that it’s just really hard to get liberals on the same page; everyone had their own agenda and their own ideas about what effective communication might be. It’s one thing to tell people to use a particular phrase or argument, but if nobody follows the advice, it doesn’t do you any good.

Which is the second factor that gave Republicans such an advantage: the willingness to subsume whatever thoughts they might have about the most compelling argument they could make, or even other topics they might like to discuss, to the GOP message of the moment. This is something Republicans have always been good at. Maybe it’s because they have a natural affinity for hierarchy and following leaders and so are happy to fall in line, or maybe it’s because they had a better appreciation of the utility of message discipline. But whichever it was, the results were obvious. 

Republicans crack up, then come back together

Things began to break down after Barack Obama was elected in 2008. His election drove a good portion of the party utterly mad, sending them deep into conspiracy theorizing that started with the belief that Obama was not actually an American and spread to their perception of every other aspect of politics. Glenn Beck, who scrawled insane conspiracies on a chalkboard purporting to show the connections between George Soros, Democratic nonprofits, and Barack Obama’s plans to herd us all into concentration camps, became the most popular right-wing talker, elevated from radio to Fox News.

Then in 2010, a new generation of Republicans was elected to Congress, people who had little or no political experience and, unlike the leaders of the party, actually believed the lunacy they were feeding to the voting public about “death panels” and Soros and Obama being a secret Muslim terrorist sleeper agent. They soon decided that their party’s own leadership was as much their enemy as the Democrats, and what ensued was an extended period of intramural tension and hostility.

That set the stage for Donald Trump’s takeover of the party, which is a long and complex tale that we don’t have to go into here. What matters is that even as he demanded loyalty and punished dissenters, there was still lots of internal conflict, even as many establishment Republicans tried to keep their heads down and avoid it. The infighting never stopped, with the tea party’s Trump-era progeny battling the party’s leadership and successfully booting Kevin McCarthy from the speakership. But now that’s all over. The party is back together. 

Even figures like Sen. Susan Collins have joined in the chorus of condemnation of the Trump verdict. When former Maryland governor and current Senate Candidate Larry Hogan posted an utterly anodyne statement on X about respecting the legal process, he was savaged by the party’s leadership in a clear object lesson to any other Republican who might feel an urge to express support for the judicial system. Here’s how the guy running Trump’s campaign responded:

The only other Republican I’ve seen who said anything similar was former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, and nobody noticed. As Sen. Tim Scott said on Fox News Sunday, “There’s no doubt that this verdict has actually brought — unifying our party.”

Few things bring Republicans together quite like the idea that their leaders might be held accountable for their misdeeds, especially when power is at stake (you’ll remember the explosive rage that erupted when Brett Kavanaugh’s spotless character was besmirched).  From the center-right to the far right, from the establishment to the rebels, they’re all together now. We don’t know how long it will last, or what impact it will have. But the monolith is back.