Much has been made of a schism in the MAGA movement created by President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, but one analyst doesn’t see signs of that happening at mass scale.
Some high-profile Trump allies have spoken out against the war as out of step with his campaign promises, but Washington Post columnist Jim Geraghty pointed to polls showing that MAGA’s rank-and-file are on board with his decision to join Israel in a military operation against Iran.
“We can debate whether ‘Trumpism’ exists as a coherent philosophy in foreign and domestic policies,” Geraghty wrote. “I would argue it’s more of a pugnacious attitude with a handful of immovable north stars (immigration enforcement, tariffs, disregard for multilateralism) and every other policy decision negotiable — up to and including the federal government taking an ownership stake and some degree of control over private companies.”
A recent NBC News poll conducted after the war began found an astonishing 100-percent approval rating among self-identified MAGA Republicans, so his most fervent supporters absolutely do believe military action in Iran satisfies their wishes.
“If you’re a Trump supporter who is upset or wary about the Iran war or the resulting impact on gas prices … maybe you’re not as inclined to identify as MAGA to a pollster lately,” Geraghty wrote. “That’s why we shouldn’t expect to find many MAGA supporters expressing their opposition to Trump’s decisions on Iran or much else. When people in this demographic disagree strongly enough, eventually they just stop calling themselves MAGA.”
There is no Trumpism without Trump himself, Geraghty wrote, and there’s not much to the political movement other than loyalty to the president.
“Aligning with MAGA is probably closely correlated to how people feel about the state of the country and their approval of Trump — when they think he’s doing well, they identify as MAGA; when he isn’t, they don’t,” Geraghty wrote.
Maybe the war will shake off some self-identified MAGA Republicans from the president’s base of support, which seems to rest at around 30 percent among registered voters, but Geraghty doesn’t see that on the horizon.
“That may be a long way off,” he wrote. “After all, most MAGA supporters voted for the man three times — and would vote for him another three times if they could. Concluding he was wrong about the war might mean he was wrong about other things, too … and thus, they themselves were wrong to believe in his judgment so fervently.”
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