Is there a civil war in the Republican Party? In a written online conversation, the Times Opinion editor John Guida hosted Benjamin Domenech, an editor at large for The Spectator and the writer of the newsletter The Transom, and Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and the author of “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the G.O.P.,” to explore this moment of friction over the Epstein files, the fallout from the Tucker Carlson-Nick Fuentes interview and the recent elections.
John Guida: President Trump and his party have been roiled by intense intraparty rancor and bitter clashes. They are bickering over antisemitism in the party, the proliferation of Groypers (who oppose diversity and immigration and believe the United States was better off when Christian white men were in charge), the fallout over documents related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein … and more. Ben, this week you wrote a column with the headline “Is MAGA Cracking Up?” You answered “almost certainly yes.”
In addition, Trump defended Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic white supremacist, and the House and Senate overwhelmingly voted to release the Epstein files. You are both very close observers of MAGA and the G.O.P. What’s going on?
Benjamin Domenech: The question on the minds of many observers of Republican politics for the past decade has been some form of: How long can this last? The realignment engineered by Trump turned out to be very real, not just a fluke of running against Hillary Clinton or of exploiting weakened G.O.P. establishment institutions.
But there was also an underlying recognition that this was a coalition uniquely built by Trump. The explosion of public animosity on the right in the past few months is driven in part by internal disputes, but also ignores a more generalized inability to deal with the hard post-2024 reality that the pre-Covid economy hasn’t come back for many of the people who expected it would once Trump was back in the Oval. The economic success was what fueled everything else, and without it, the fractures are harder to ignore.
Patrick Ruffini: You can count me as a card-carrying member of the “nothing ever happens” school of Trump polling. If MAGA were really cracking up, you’d see it in the polls. In our polling, Trump has been above or near a 95 percent approval rating among supporters since he took office in January. The media and influencer discourse can be pretty disconnected from the voter reality.
Where Trump is losing ground — which we saw in the recent election results — is among the low-propensity independents who surged toward him in 2024.
Guida: So the president’s base is holding. But you both also mention the “elite” in the G.O.P. Do you see erosion there — and if so, does it concern you?
Domenech: It’s certainly a concern for Republican politicians. I just interviewed Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana on my Fox News podcast, and asked him if MAGA is cracking up, and how concerned he is about it. And his answer was effectively not yet, but it’s a problem — and that seems to be the general attitude on Capitol Hill among the president’s key allies. They see what’s going on as more than noise but not yet a movement.
But given the power of the platforms of the people who seem bent on making an extreme break that could either shear off the president’s newest allies from the coalition of the right or risk losing the ability to appeal to traditional Republican voters, it’s impossible for the elected leaders and institutional activists to ignore. And in the absence of a unifying figure for the right — as the late Charlie Kirk really was — the potential for coalitional breaks that bleed into a midterm election year is real.
Ruffini: To some extent, G.O.P. influencers and elites are just jockeying for position in the post-Trump era. A lot hinges on the question of whether MAGA itself is bigger than just allegiance to Trump. The more it’s just about Trump, the bigger the eventual crackup — especially if the G.O.P. loses in 2028.
But Trump is still in charge. His ability to keep Republican members of Congress on his side depends on the loyalty of his voter base to fuel primaries against anyone who steps out of line. The key tell here would be if Trump’s endorsement no longer holds as much sway as it once did in G.O.P. primaries.
Guida: House and Senate Republicans voted overwhelmingly on the Epstein files release bill. That is not something we’ve seen very often this year. What is the significance of the overwhelming vote, and where does this go from here for Trump?
Domenech: I’m not sure I’ve seen any story in roughly a quarter century covering politics that has gone through as many twists and turns as the Epstein conspiracy — and I do tend to think, as with most conspiracies, this will be one where there are never enough answers to satisfy the public. But the idea that Trump was going to get re-elected and just ignore this whole thing struck me as bizarre.
I honestly don’t know what to expect going forward, but this was one where Trump’s assertion of control backfired for a small group of members who felt they’d earned the license to break with him on something the MAGA base still cares about. So I view it less as a rebuke of Trump by congressional Republicans and more a setup for what that relationship looks like going forward as people jockey to be the next thing.
Ruffini: Trump has come this far because he has impeccable instincts for what the conservative base thinks. He takes in what he hears from his supporters and reflects it back on them in a way I don’t think we have ever seen any politician do before. Where the Epstein issue was different was that he was pushing against what most grass-roots conservatives thought they were voting for in 2024.
Domenech: Strange new respect for Marjorie Taylor Greene was not something I had on my bingo card.
Guida: Will she be in the House in 2027? Or does she have other plans?
Domenech: Yes, I think she’s running for president. I can’t think why she wouldn’t. There is a faction that views her as more MAGA than JD Vance. She’ll get plenty of small-donor backers. Whether she wants to do that from Congress or not is up to her. But someone will run in that lane, and why not her?
Ruffini: I agree with Ben here. There’s a lane in the primary for someone who’s MAGA and temperamentally a troublemaker and disrupter like Trump himself was in 2016. Now it takes someone with Trump’s unique personality to pull off winning from this outsider lane — which is why the path to previous G.O.P. nominations is littered with the bodies of countless bomb throwers who thought they could knock off the front-runner.
Domenech: Essentially, what Patrick is talking about here is Vance’s Achilles’ heel: He came late to the MAGA party, even said he would vote for Evan McMullin, and now has become the president’s foremost advocate with a lock-step loyalty. That allows for an anti-establishment lane, where you don’t have to defend everything Trump does or did, and in fact can use Vance’s loyalty as a political defect while still claiming the mantle of America First. One can easily imagine Greene making the case that Vance’s closeness to the president equates to foreign entanglements with Israel or a too-hawkish foreign policy, or that (as many in the G.O.P. feel) they haven’t done enough to address costs, affordability and more populist concerns. She could even call Vance a Johnny-come-lately to the MAGA movement and depict herself as an O.G. believer. It’s a natural fit, and Vance will have to overcome it. If Vance and Marco Rubio have some handshake deal going into 2028, as some G.O.P. leaders hope, that plays to her advantage.
Guida: That might explain Greene’s recent turn toward pushing the president on health care subsidies. What about her recent apology “for taking part in the toxic politics”? Do you see her trying to forge a path that is not automatically disqualifying to a broader national audience while also maintaining her MAGA bona fides?
Domenech: I think she’s savvy in playing that game. The problem is it seems completely out of character for her, and more of an act that has temporary resonance in a time when people are just exhausted of politics as opposed to a real pivot. Civility isn’t the same as working across political lines. Some of the most bipartisan people I’ve known weren’t hesitant about calling people assholes, including my late father-in-law, John McCain. I should know: He did it to me enough! Unfortunately, politeness and civic-minded restraint in the long term is a loser’s game in this day and age — but using it to disarm others can be very effective.
Ruffini: Greene realizes that if you want to have real influence, you can’t just be an unserious figure obsessed with likes and clicks, shouting down everything the establishment does from the sidelines. The Matt Gaetz or Thomas Massie road is a dead end.
Guida: The MAGA mantle is up for grabs in future elections. Timothy Carney wrote in The Washington Examiner recently that “the Trump era is one of G.O.P. decline.” He said that since 2016, the party has lost governorships and legislative chambers, and he laid out a rule: “Elections in which Trump is on the ballot, the G.O.P. does fine. In elections in which he is not, the G.O.P. does poorly.” Is Trumpism without Trump an electoral dud, or can it still be potent without Trump on the ballot?
Domenech: Electoral success without Trump at the top of the ticket has proved very elusive, in part because the coalition Trump built depends on voters who are lower frequency and less engaged in local politics. There are obvious exceptions to this rule, but it’s basically a repeat of what Democrats experienced with Barack Obama.
Ruffini: During Obama’s tenure, the seats Democrats lost from the state legislatures on up number around a thousand. That’s part of the nature of being in office: You get elected and start doing things many people don’t like — and the backlash in off-year and special elections is fierce.
Domenech: Obama-era Democrats built up a powerful voter-motivating machine that could make up at least some of the difference. Republicans have to try to do the same thing, which is no easy task in a dramatically altered media environment. One criticism of Vance that has caught on in some corners is that he’s too online — but in order to motivate people in 2028, he may need to be.
Ruffini: Trump, when he was on the ballot, brought in Republicans who might not have otherwise won. To some extent, his presence on the ticket was a boon to more moderate Republicans, where college-educated suburban voters could take out their antipathy to Trump at the top of the ticket while still voting for their friendly local Republican representative or senator.
It’s not just the low-propensity voter problem, though. In off years, you don’t have Trump on the ballot for these voters to take it out on, so they take it out on whichever Republican happens to be running.
Guida: So perhaps what a party, Republican or Democratic, needs at the top of a national ticket is a charismatic figure who can turn out voters (preferably their own, though as we have seen, sometimes it can be voters of the opposite party, which is its own problem). Do you see any such figure in the G.O.P. at the moment? What about the vice president?
Domenech: It’s too early to say. Vance has proved to be a very capable advocate, and one who can anticipate the direction of the media debate around certain topics, and my friend Hugh Hewitt thinks he’s the most effective vice president since the young Richard Nixon was working with Eisenhower (and Hugh should know, since he worked for Nixon).
But that’s not necessarily what will be enough to appeal beyond a duct-taped version of the Trump coalition. Still, Vance has been in elected office for less than three years. I wouldn’t be surprised if, even after all this, he finds a way to hold on to the coalition when placed in opposition to whoever the Democratic Party chooses to elevate.
Ruffini: What you saw in Vance’s victory in the vice-presidential debate was someone who could translate MAGA to the suburban voter Republicans have lost ground with. The question of whether someone other than Trump can sustain the G.O.P.’s gains with working-class voters is still well worth asking, but even if Vance loses some support there, he has some potential to make it up in the suburbs.
Guida: Based on outcomes this month, the Trump coalition does look unstable. Patrick, you have written about a multiracial populist coalition, yet in the recent elections, the G.O.P. performed poorly among groups — Latinos and younger voters — central to the premise of that coalition. How durable is it?
Ruffini: Latino voters are walking the same path as white ethnic and working-class voters in the country, but the realignment of the white working class into the G.O.P. that started during the Vietnam era was anything but smooth. Jimmy Carter actually won lots of them back, and Bill Clinton drew close with working-class whites. It was only under Trump that they became the G.O.P. bulwark they are today.
What I think we’ll continue to see is a slow, tectonic shift of working-class minorities to the center, and away from their status as an unshakable pillar of the Democratic coalition under Obama. Because this group’s partisan loyalties are in flux, you’ll still see big swings from election to election. And if they’re smart, both parties will be paying lots of attention to them.
Domenech: Holding on to Latino voters is a real problem for a G.O.P. that was used to speaking in the language of trickle-down economics and Wall Street and free trade. Now Republicans have been taking their eyes off the ball and relying too heavily on the “big, beautiful bill,” which will be long forgotten when people go to the polls next fall.
Guida: Let’s turn to the G.O.P. clashes over the Carlson-Fuentes interview and the rancor over antisemitism in the party. One aspect is about generational differences. One conservative writer heard that the percentage of Gen Z-ers who work for Republicans in Washington and are Fuentes fans is anywhere from 30 percent to 40 percent; others put it lower … well, still high, but a lot less than that. Let’s just say that there are plenty of younger Republicans sympathetic to some extreme ideas. Does that concern you, in particular in terms of their ability to put pressure on those who control the direction of the party?
Another way of asking this is: What strains or fractures are most striking to you, or may form lasting coalitional fault lines?
Domenech: There is no broad constituency for Fuentes’s “ideas” within the G.O.P. coalition, if you can call “Hitler was awesome” an idea. It’s more that Fuentes has become a convenient shorthand for a certain kind of hate-filled trollishness, which, besides being racist and stupid, is also deeply unfunny, humor being the mark of any good troll. The biggest issue isn’t what Fuentes says. Some figures on the right think it’s “important” to treat him as a gatekeeper to some group of voters, rather than just the loudest troll.
Ruffini: The question I keep coming back to is what’s the election — primary or general — where you’ll see these far-right figures actually change the outcome? Scott Rasmussen had a poll out recently that found that just 6 percent of Americans could correctly define the term “Groyper,” and only 1 percent associated it with Nick Fuentes. If that’s the number of Americans who can even define what this group is, the actual support it has is bound to be much, much lower.
Guida: Patrick, you put together an interactive, “What’s Your Political Tribe?” It offers a fun way of thinking about politics as well as a handy way of thinking about the various parts of the electorate in interesting ways. Since we’re talking about the G.O.P., I wonder how you think of the various tribes within the Republican Party?
Ruffini: This quiz was based on extensive polling we’ve done over the years — and which really highlight how the Republican coalition has changed. In our surveys, we’ve consistently identified a populist voting bloc — left-oriented on economics but culturally conservative — that’s swung toward Trump in recent years. We wanted to see if we would see groups like that in the quiz, which we knew would be taken by people who are more politically engaged, not your average voter. And we do, just not nearly to the same extent — which tells us that there are still pretty big blind spots by political and media types when it comes to understanding who the decisive voting blocs in elections really are.
Guida: A few final lightning-round questions: Is there a Republican Senate primary that you are keen to follow next year, particularly with the future of the party in mind?
Ruffini: The three-way Texas primary looms pretty large. Here you have the incumbent Republican John Cornyn being challenged by the hard-right attorney general Ken Paxton and now by an upstart, Representative Wesley Hunt. It’s a familiar battle for those who have followed the evolution of conservative challenges to the establishment. But having been the subject of impeachment proceedings and corruption allegations, Paxton is a pretty substandard avatar for the MAGA wing, and his victory would make Texas genuinely competitive in the fall if he won.
Domenech: I’ll agree with Patrick here — the question is how much are you willing to swallow as Texas voters: either a notably establishment lean on Cornyn’s part on some key issues that infuriate the base, or total lock-step MAGA loyalty combined with a complete train wreck of a personal life on Paxton’s side.
Guida: A federal judge rejected the new Republican-friendly congressional maps in Texas. Will the redistricting efforts in the midterms next year make a big difference, no difference or something in between?
Ruffini: The fact that this decision caught everyone unawares shows just how hard the final outcome of mid-decade redistricting is to predict. I think the Supreme Court likely reverses this — and either way, Florida Republicans probably put their foot on the gas to give the G.O.P. four or five extra seats (especially if this stands).
Guida: Are there any figures that you watch with particular interest as barometers for a post-Trump G.O.P.?
Domenech: To me, the most interesting category for the post-Trump G.O.P. is the crossovers. Trump’s unique appeal brought in Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a host of Covid-era contrarians — and has featured a cozying up of more traditional Democrats like John Fetterman, Silicon Valley and the union leaders that were once anathema to your typical Republicans. Do these people stay within or adjacent to the coalition if it’s headed up by Vance or Rubio? Do they have a candidate for the nomination in 2028? That could be fascinating.
Ruffini: The most interesting person will be whoever fills the shoes left by the late Charlie Kirk, someone who reshaped the coalition and led the recent shift of young people into the conservative movement. You’ve seen many people jockeying for position on this, but I don’t think there’s a clear heir yet. Probably the closest person I see right now is Ben Shapiro, who a few weeks ago had an excoriating takedown of Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson, really trying to reanimate conservatism as a moral cause and kick out the cranks, just like William F. Buckley did to the John Birch Society.
Benjamin Domenech (@bdomenech) is an editor at large for The Spectator and writes the newsletter The Transom. Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster, is the author of “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the G.O.P.” and the newsletter The Intersection. John Guida is a Times Opinion editor.
Source photographs by Kayla Bartkowski and Tasos Katopodis via Getty Images.
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