Paths to power and winning elections inside the GOP are changing rapidly and radically, spawning a new generation of kingmakers while diminishing the clout of many who lorded over the party for years.
Why it matters: Fourteen of the Republican Party’s top consultants and operatives across the country spoke in detail with Axios about how profoundly primary races have changed since 2014 — the last pre-Donald Trump midterm election and the last midterms in which a Democrat occupied the White House.
What we found: Those sources — whose clients range from as Trumpy as they come to establishment Republicans — described a clear shift in the party’s power brokers. They spoke of changes to the ecosystem across four categories: institutional upheaval, endorsements, conservative media and donors.
Axios granted them anonymity so they could speak with a degree of candor that’s not possible on the record because of personal and business relationships. Here’s what they told us:
Who had the power:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
The NRA
The Koch network
Heritage Action
The Drudge Report
National Review
Conservative movement groups such as Tea Party Express, FreedomWorks, and the Senate Conservatives Fund.
Who has power now:
Donald Trump
Tucker Carlson
Family and former aides to Trump
Fox News
Club for Growth
Daily Wire
Breitbart News
Online influencers including Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, Joe Rogan, Jack Posobiec, Charlie Kirk and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.
Steve Bannon
Susan B. Anthony List
Between the lines: Most of these changes weren’t gradual. They were triggered by the shockwave of 2016.
Much of the institutional GOP worked against Trump in 2016. Much of the heft they believed their endorsements carried evaporated as voters saw in real-time how Trump had little need for them and ultimately obliterated them.
Said one top consultant: “You wouldn’t know that these groups were paper tigers — unless you ever ran against one of them.”
Uh huh. That sounds like a Trumper, alright.
This may be more or less tru but I suspect it’s more of an addition than a replacement. Consider this:
In the immediate aftermath of Republican Glenn Youngkin’s Virginia governorship victory last week, many pundits credited an uprising against critical race theory as the key to the former Carlyle Group executive’s electoral success. But hardly anyone is talking about how critical race theory has largely been an “astroturf” issue created by GOP operatives with a backlash funded by billionaire donors.
The anti-CRT movement has descended with a vengeance this year into suburban school board meetings and Fox News programming. And while the movement may present itself with a local face, many of its most effective advocacy groups are propped up by wealthy, well-connected backers—right down to its connections to the billionaire Koch family.
The Daily Beast has identified eight recently created anti-CRT groups which operate at local levels across the country but bear ties to ideological right-wing aristocrats and political operatives. Their backers include former officials in Donald Trump’s administration, an executive at a notorious D.C. lobbying firm, as well as Koch entities and The Federalist Society.
Don’t count out the old guard. They are survivors.
And the new guard? They are organized around the Big Lie and Donald Trump. Period. Will that last? I don’t know. We’ll have to see if they have the same ability to keep their eyes on the prize as their elders do.