Who gets the GOP when Trump is gone?

When I first entered the public arena, the focus of my work was almost entirely on why the right needed to take power seriously. Conservatives had suffered a devastating string of political and cultural losses because they focused on argument and ideology while paying little attention to the way power actually worked. That criticism drew plenty of hostility from defenders of the status quo who did not appreciate some rookie pointing out why decades of conservative leadership had produced so little.

It turns out I was not alone. Popular voices including Matt Walsh and John Doyle now openly support conservatives taking and wielding power effectively. That disagreement has launched another round of public debate over the pursuit of power, but the argument is only a proxy for a larger battle over JD Vance, foreign policy, and the future of MAGA.

The arguments breaking out across the conservative commentariat are not separate fights. They are proxy battles over the same question.

Donald Trump represented a serious threat to the established political order. Initially dismissed as a brash reality television host, he quickly demonstrated that he was tapping into something deeper than celebrity and catchy insults. Trump was not a career politician. He did not enter politics with deep ideological commitments, and he did not know or care about the established rules.

He fused law and order, economic protectionism, foreign policy restraint, immigration enforcement, and culture-war issues in a way no Republican candidate had since Pat Buchanan. Trump saw an untapped political market and, like any good businessman, gave the customers what they wanted.

Many prominent establishment figures declared themselves “NeverTrump” and vowed to resist MAGA’s takeover of the conservative movement. That strategy failed. Trump became a political steamroller. Some NeverTrumpers migrated into the Democratic coalition or created opposition “conservative” outlets such as the Bulwark. Others decided to wait.

MAGA had the populist momentum, but the establishment still controlled institutions, personnel, and much of the donor class. The bet was that it could outlast MAGA and co-opt it, just as the Republican establishment had absorbed the Tea Party.

The next opportunity came with Ron DeSantis. Establishment conservatives hoped Trump’s legal troubles would make him vulnerable to a popular governor with a record of victories. DeSantis was supposed to offer Trumpism without Trump: populist energy packaged in a form more compatible with the old ideological agenda.

It did not work. Trump’s primary and general-election victories removed any illusion that a direct assault on him from inside the party could succeed.

If the establishment could not oust Trump, the remaining option was to derail his movement and prevent anyone from carrying MAGA into future elections. Despite Republican control of the House, Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court, congressional Republicans have repeatedly clashed with the administration. The Senate has stalled key personnel and has not passed the SAVE Act. Republican politicians know they must praise Trump rhetorically, but many continue to resist important parts of his agenda.

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Add a deeply unpopular war with no obvious end, and the result is an effective containment mechanism: MAGA divided, distracted, and exhausted.

That is why the fight over JD Vance matters so much. When Trump sent the vice president to negotiate a peace deal, critics who had spent years presenting themselves as Trump’s loyal allies suddenly questioned Vance’s ideology, associations, and viability as a successor. Like Trump, Vance is not wedded to neoconservative foreign policy. His role in the negotiations made clear that he is being prepared as a possible heir to the movement.

At the same time, some critics began presenting Marco Rubio as an alternative while attacking any attempt to withdraw from the conflict.

The fights over power, foreign policy, affordability, and the dangers of the New Right are therefore part of the same proxy war for control of the GOP. It is no accident that many establishment figures who favor expansive military commitments abroad also recoil from using political power aggressively at home.

We can always find money for war, but when the cost of living becomes unbearable, suddenly government action is communism. The overlap is not accidental. It reflects the old conservative settlement: Republicans may fight wars abroad and protect big business at home. They may talk endlessly about social issues, but they are not supposed to spend serious political capital addressing them.

That is why it may seem strange to watch figures such as James Lindsay, Joel Berry, and Ben Shapiro portray Matt Walsh as a socialist or JD Vance as a crypto-Nazi. The rhetoric makes more sense when viewed through coalitional politics. Whatever they think personally of Walsh or Vance, they recognize that both threaten an order that has existed for decades.

The conservative movement became comfortable as beautiful losers: controlled opposition rewarded with money, status, and institutional access while the country moved steadily left. Trump disrupted that arrangement. Vance threatens to continue disrupting it.

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If conservatism is ever to become a real political movement, it must escape the ideological shackles that keep it from acting. As Russell Kirk argued in “The Conservative Mind,” conservatism should not be about preserving an abstract ideology but a particular people and their way of life.

MAGA represented that shift. It was willing to pursue policies that improved the lives of Americans even when those policies fell outside neoconservative economic or foreign-policy orthodoxy. Achieving those goals requires the right to think seriously about power and how to wield it. Even reducing the size of government requires acquiring and applying state power.

The NeverTrump project now is to poison the well around Vance, prevent him from inheriting the movement, and return the GOP to establishment politics as usual.

That is the argument underneath the latest round of conservative infighting. The personalities change, the immediate controversy changes, and the slogans change, but the stakes remain constant. Someone will define what MAGA becomes after Trump, and the establishment has no intention of surrendering that decision.

The arguments breaking out across the conservative commentariat are not separate fights. They are proxy battles over the same question: Who gets to rule the Republican Party after Trump?