Nobody could call it an anniversary mood. As Americans celebrate their country’s 250th birthday, more than half, in a recent poll of polls, think it is headed in the wrong direction, while Donald Trump’s approval ratings have been hitting all-time lows. There is little love for the Democrats either. But one thing is sure: Trump will soon be a lame-duck president.
Even his grip on the party is loosening. He can still punish dissent by running primary opponents against incumbent Republicans, as Senator John Cornyn of Texas learnt last month. Yet four Republican senators voted with Democrats this week to pass a war powers resolution intended to rein in the president’s authority to resume hostilities against Iran. If Tucker Carlson, a former loyalist, is to be believed, the war has cost Trump much Maga support.
Democrats may win the House and possibly the Senate in November. Even if they do not, attention will turn to Trump’s likely Republican successor and to what kind of Republicanism follows: the milder sort, now dim to memory, able to work with liberals and progressives? Or the illiberal, hard-right kind to which Trump has given loud, if erratic, voice?