the election of donald j. trump will bring as sharp a turn to the right as this country has seen since at least the election of ronald reagan <u+2014> thanks mainly to the rare conservative control of congress, the presidency and, before long, the supreme court. but in a strange and unforeseeable way his campaign and election mark the end of the era in which american politics is defined by ideological conflict. ever since the election of reagan 36 years ago, american politics has been marked by profound ideological division, increasing polarization and often paralysis. the ideologically coherent and often unyielding conservative movement represented the dominant theme, while liberals (many of whom wouldn<u+2019>t even use that word) struggled to find a pitch as clear and appealing as the right<u+2019>s message of lower taxes, smaller government and strong defense. the election of 2016 is the culmination of this ideological era, but ironically reveals its hollowness. the politics of 2016 breaks entirely along lines of identity: first race or ethnicity, followed by gender, level of education, urbanization and age. the first mystery of the year was how donald trump won his party<u+2019>s nomination, but more important, why 16 others, including popular governors and senators, lost. the answer is simply that all the others thought the key to the republican base was ideology. some, such as senator ted cruz of texas, styled themselves as the purest and most adamant of conservatives, others as just practical enough to deliver on conservative goals and one (gov. john kasich) as sort of a moderate. none of them clicked with the republican base, simply because ideology wasn<u+2019>t what motivated the base. it was always about identity, about them and us. only mr. trump had that key. consider immigration, the concept that drove both the tea party and the trump campaign. for most of the long campaign, the media thought that it was about immigration policy : comprehensive immigration reform versus border security and deportations. the republican <u+201c>autopsy<u+201d> from 2012 concluded that republicans should support immigration reform. but it turns out it was always just about immigrants , as in, people who aren<u+2019>t like us, not policy. that<u+2019>s why trump supporters were unmoved by reports that melania trump had worked in the united states without authorization, and it<u+2019>s why mr. trump, in a late rally in minnesota, declared that the state had <u+201c> suffered enough <u+201d> from the presence of somali immigrants, a well-settled middle-class group in the state for more than two decades. it<u+2019>s why mr. trump found his strongest support not in areas most affected by immigration but in aging states with the lowest number of foreign-born residents, such as ohio, iowa and wisconsin, where immigration is mostly a distant symbol of otherness. ideology had formed a kind of a comforting curtain around the more intractable divides of race and identity. ideological conflict, as deep and irresolvable as it often seems, at least in theory, lends itself to persuasion and compromise, such as president obama<u+2019>s long quest for a <u+201c>grand bargain<u+201d> on spending and taxes. ideology can help structure people<u+2019>s engagement with politics, giving them clear preferences organized around a few core values. but ideology can also be hard work <u+2014> most people don<u+2019>t have the time or inclination to decide if they are <u+201c>liberal<u+201d> or <u+201c>conservative,<u+201d> and what that means, or to fight about it. with his shifting, largely irrelevant policies, his birtherism and his targeting of people (mexicans, <u+201c>bad hombres<u+201d>) rather than problems, mr. trump pulled the curtain away. it was identity all along. mr. cruz, paul d. ryan and, in the 1990s, newt gingrich hadn<u+2019>t mobilized their constituencies into an ideological army, it turned out; they had simply pushed identity politics further to the forefront in white america. (it became overt when senator john mccain<u+2019>s first ad in the 2008 general election declared him <u+201c>t he american president americans have been waiting for ,<u+201d> and continued with the identitarian, anti-immigrant fervor of the tea party.) hillary clinton<u+2019>s campaign was identity-focused as well, in the more traditional sense, defining the country as a happy cosmopolitan polyglot, and according to some reporting, it deliberately expended resources on college-educated women, young voters and minorities (the <u+201c> rising american electorate<u+201d>) rather than noncollege white working-class voters. if so, it was a tactical mistake. mr. obama in 2012 had targeted the same voters, but with a more explicitly ideological story about government<u+2019>s role in rebuilding the auto industry and the economy. what<u+2019>s the alternative to ideological or identity politics? before reagan, politics had been largely technocratic, substituting expertise for ideology. <u+201c>what is at stake in our economic decisions today is not some grand warfare of rival ideologies which will sweep the country with passion but the practical management of a modern economy,<u+201d> john f. kennedy said in 1962. experts would address <u+201c>subtle challenges for which technical answers, not political answers, must be provided.<u+201d> the candidacy of barry goldwater two years later and reagan 18 years later, along with the <u+201c>best and the brightest<u+201d> debacle in vietnam, proved the fallacy of that technocratic era. one of the odd things about mr. trump is that he has brought back j.f.k.<u+2019>s <u+201c>trust me<u+201d> mode in a kind of unhinged parody. his plans are neither detailed nor ideological: he will replace the affordable care act with <u+201c>great plans<u+201d> and negotiate better deals. a reporter listening to an early focus group of trump supporters in 2015 said they <u+201c>sounded like relations of an ill patient, furious that all the previous doctors have botched a test or fumbled the scalpel. to them, trump actually is the real-deal fixer-upper, and he is going to make america great again.<u+201d> rather than a pragmatic fixer-upper, mr. trump now seems likely to be the vehicle through which the ideological right achieves its decades-old dream of undoing the great society and the warren and burger courts. but the victory that made that possible was based explicitly on identity, not ideology. mark schmitt is the director of the political reform program at the research organization new america.
what trump exposed about the g.o.p.
mark schmitt