CPAC always winds up its proceedings by polling its audience as to their favorite to next lead the conservative movement, or as it has increasingly identified as in the last decade, the MAGA movement. Vice President JD Vance won that ad hoc survey Sunday, with 61 percent of respondents choosing him as the MAGA heir. We said Trump's choice of Vance as his running mate was "inspired." That he is also the choice for the future is both logical and obvious.
Of course, this would only make sense as he is also the obvious choice to succeed President Donald Trump because vice presidents are almost always favored to be the next in line. But it’s almost like there are two titles that a Republican leader must hold to expect to win the presidency. This is a direct result of the Republican Party changing under Trump in a way that supersedes any transformation the party has experienced since its founding in 1856.
It is a good thing conservative voters are considering their options for 2028 because Trump's second term in office is Constitutionally his last. But the legacy that he has already created and the one that he will ultimately fashion over the next four years is one that could be transitory and fragile and subject to destruction from a revitalized Democratic Party intent upon seizing the levers of power and enforcing a woke and globalist agenda that Trump has been and will be so successful in neutralizing.
One way to avoid this reversal is to emphasize that the Republican Party and MAGA are inseparable. Trump has altered the GOP in a way that is unprecedented. Consider the origins of the Republican Party when it first emerged on the American political horizon just years before the US Civil War. While many people believe that Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican candidate for president, he was in fact the first successful candidate. John C. Fremont was the party’s choice in 1856 and he lost to a man who has been assessed by history and most historians as perhaps the worst president in history: John Buchanan, a Democrat who literally watched the United States drift into a bitter internecine conflict that still ranks as the nation’s deadliest.
Lincoln of course was elected in 1860, just as the Confederate states galvanized and began to secede from the Union. He is appraised by most historians as the greatest president because he arose to the overwhelming occasion of saving the nation from permanent rupture.
But you would not recognize Lincoln as what we would come to see as a traditional Republican. He instituted an income tax to pay for the war and advocated large-scale government spending on such things as railways and roads. It was in the post-Civil War years that the Republican Party became the party of limited government and laissez-faire capitalism. In the beginning, Republicans were the liberals and the Democrats conservative. The GOP ended slavery and upset the status quo while the Democrats were content to live in the past.
But Republicans were able to adapt to the changing fiscal reality of the late 19th century and make America an economic powerhouse.
That is precisely what Ronald Reagan did, first as the party influencer who introduced Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) as the Republican presidential nominee in 1964 and then, 16 years later, as the presidential candidate himself. Reagan took the GOP from an establishment party of Nelson Rockefeller dedicated to keeping the very rich very rich, to a party that wanted to make the free enterprise system work for everyone. Reagan inspired voters with his talk of America being a “city on a hill” and his commitment to getting government off the backs of the people.
The Republicans lost their way after Reagan’s departure. In the George W. Bush years, they became a party that bailed out huge banks that paid their CEOs and abandoned investors. Republicans became the party of endless wars, not peace through strength. That corrosive legacy continues to survive among Republicans in Congress, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) being the most toxic and the most prominent, who will forever seek American involvement in any foreign war that promises to feed the Military-Industrial Complex that another great Republican—President Dwight Eisenhower—identified in 1961.
Donald J. Trump gave the Republican Party back to the people and this is what Make America Great Again is all about. Trump told average Americans that they mattered, that their jobs mattered, that their opinions mattered, that their citizenship as Americans mattered and that he wasn’t going to lead some coalition of bankers and louche country clubbers. He said meritocracy was important, that illegal immigration was a crime and that there was something called a Deep State that would tenaciously try to hold onto power and diminish the efforts of a populist movement seeking to bring authority back to the people. He made the Republicans a party of peace and free speech again.
JD Vance must inherit that mantle, just as he has helped define the MAGA movement within the GOP. Listen to Vance’s powerful words as he told European leaders to stop playing games with the fundamental building blocks of democracy. “As it turns out, you can't mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can't force people what to think, what to feel or what to believe. And we believe those things are certainly connected. And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War's winners. I look to Brussels, where EU Commission commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to be, quote, hateful content, or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of quote combating misogyny on the internet.”
During the same speech and in another one at CPAC, Vance also reiterated the warning against mass immigration, especially when it becomes illegal immigration.
Most Democrats are still bewildered why Americans have turned against them. They don’t understand freedom. They only understand control. But you can bet that they want that power back. Every time Trump revokes another woke policy or begins another round of deportations, Democrats are watching their empire fold. They are longing for those days of open borders, phony white supremacy and censorship in pursuit of disinformation. They would love to turn back the clock. That is why Republicans must never be comfortable with being in power but always be at ease with listening to the people. Vance has a huge job ahead of him and Republicans need to define him as Trump’s successor to the presidency and the founder of MAGA. And do it now because the enemies of freedom haven’t given up yet.