[This is a continuation of my "Political Lessons From President George W. Bush" series, in which I discuss some political lessons Republicans could learn from the second term of President George W. Bush. Briefly, I believe that it is important for a Republican president to avoid the second-term political collapse that happened to President Bush and that, to do so, a Republican president, e.g., Donald Trump, needs to follow a bifurcated strategy to keep his polling support up among both the GOP party base and with independents. You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4, here and here and here and here, respectively.]

One thing that is dramatically different between the second Trump term and the second Bush term is the state of the opposition party. Despite both President Bush and President Trump winning second terms by similar popular margins, with Bush actually doing slightly better, the Democrats have dramatically collapsed post-2024 in a way they did not do under Bush. My colleagues at RedState have already started to highlight this, which could leave them in a similar position as they were during the late '70s and '80s, when the Democrats were not considered a serious national party (for the presidency) and lost by large popular margins to Nixon, Reagan and the first Bush.

This is entirely because of the Doom Loop I mentioned before. The Democrat base really believes their own propaganda that Donald Trump is the devil. They see this “truth” echoed in the MSM day after day and simply cannot conceive of why others don’t understand the depths of Donald Trump’s autocratic nature, evilness, corruption and perfidy. This makes them increasingly angry and desperate to punish him. They hate him on a level not seen since the Democrat hatred of President Richard Nixon in the '70s.

Meanwhile, other voters tend to be optimistic about the future and about President Trump’s new term.

Because of this, the Democrat base demands that their party go after the Trump administration full bore without flagging and without pity. Everything Donald Trump is for the Democrats must be opposed to. Everything he does must be resisted, in as nasty a way as possible. Trump administration officials, and Republicans as well, must also be opposed. Even physical violence is sometimes threatened. If the Democrat officials don’t satisfy their base’s desire for smash mouth politics, the base turns against them, as they have against Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, and in favor of such hard-edged, leftist, and intellectually challenged Democrats as Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Chris Van Hollen, and Reps. Jamie Raskin, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett.

And because of this, non-Democrats and non-Trump haters find the Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) sufferers to be fanatical and tune them out. Especially since these TDS types are also pushing policies that are often out of touch and isolated from the crucial issues facing the U.S., such as the economy, the border, crime, and world chaos.

This TDS is both a negative, and a positive, politically speaking, for Donald Trump.

The negative is that any political compromise itself is mostly dead for the next four years. This, of course, can be both a good and a bad thing, since it is a fact that the compromises that got past the Congress and the presidency before were heavily skewed towards the wants and desires of the left. However, while as a conservative I don’t want to see these types of skewed compromises pass, I also don’t think it is optimal that the Democrats hate the Trump administration more than they hate our national enemies – see Russia, China, and Iran – and that this might impede even crucial national security compromises from being enacted by both parties.

The positive is that the Trump administration can push the Democrats onto the ledge more often on the “wedge issues.” Already, the Democrats have isolated themselves on the wrong side of some wedge issues (also known as “80/20” issues), including “trans” people and the deportations of Venezuelan gang bangers and Islamist terrorist sympathizers. Now, the Trump administration can push other popular issues – such as voting rights issues – and thereby create new wedge issues. It doesn’t even matter if the president’s positions can be enforced; the Democrats will still take the bait, as their base will demand total opposition. And there is nothing really new about this – wedge issues have been useful since the late '60s and early '70s for Republicans – see “acid, abortion and amnesty.” (And note that Democrats have their own wedge issues, like “a woman’s right to choose” today.)

The Trump administration can similarly cause chaos in Democrat ranks simply by offering praise for some Democrats, even if those Democrats aren’t even worthy of any such praise. Just to cause problems for them.

This means that during the second term, unlike President Bush and his administration, President Trump and his administration have both the ability and the desire to take a strong offense against the Democrats, so as to keep the Trump approval numbers out of the zone of danger. And I expect they will. There is really no reason to do otherwise, with the Democrats already having shown that they will do literally anything – including lawfare – to finish off Donald Trump and his administration.

There is no such thing as resting on your laurels in politics.

FIN

PS: It goes almost without saying that the increasing level of TDS is a huge negative for this country (we are not talking politically, here). The amount of hatred being ginned up on the left has most probably already contributed to the actions of two unstable persons who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has also been threatened. In the past, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was also shot and almost murdered. Tesla, the electric car company pioneered by Elon Musk, which the environmentalist left use to worship, is also now being threatened with either destruction or damage by disgruntled TDS types.

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