Democrats and Republicans alike have wrestled internally this past year over the direction and future of their parties. A lot of attention has been paid to Democrats’ ugly, public civil war, but inside the Grand Old Party, different interests have wrestled as well, struggling for ownership of an ideological movement still run by one man. We learned a lot last week about who’s winning and who’s losing. And right now, the winners are the American left and the losers are the non-interventionists.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ implosion never allowed for the important soul-searching any party that loses the White House after a single term must engage in. While less radical Democrats were quick to point to the massive unpopularity of the party’s faculty-style left-wing policies, transgender obsessions, and unserious immigration policies, the guilty didn’t want to hear it. They called their accusers traitors and blamed their popular defeat on Joe Biden’s clear mental collapse, his late withdrawal from the race, and the years-long cover-up that had tried to conceal it. When you’ve got external boogeymen, it’s a lot harder to look inward.
The Democrats’ civil war is over. Republicans still have a choice ahead.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a presumptive lead candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2028, was the most major figure to attempt a political course-correction, and it quickly blew up in his face. The left openly attacked him, while tepid allies declined to attach their names to their own newspaper quotes for fear of the same treatment.
Then in New York, the Democratic mayoral primary was won by a young man who is pro-intifada, pro-drug legalization, pro-public injection sites, and pro-child genital mutilation, but anti-police, anti-cash bail, anti-private gun ownership, anti-private health care, and anti-cooperation with federal immigration authorities. It was a stunning rebuke to a tired Democratic Party establishment, and more is on the way.
The party’s old guard is aging out, and the reality is that men like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) are among the last forces attempting to restrain the unbridled anti-Americanism of the party’s younger generation. They may win a few rearguard actions, possibly propelling party exile and current New York Mayor Eric Adams (I) to victory in New York this fall, but even that would be a last gasp. They are in retreat. The left has won.
Republicans faced an important reckoning last week too. In their case, it was over the strikes on Iran. Neoconservatives and other robust interventionists beat out the nascent doves and non-interventionist wing of the MAGA movement when President Donald Trump did what he always said he’d do: make sure Iran was unable to acquire nuclear weapons. Their political triumph, however, was more a side effect of the doves’ blunders than their own salience.
While the pro-interventionists were quick to crow about their victory and the thus-far limited spillover effect of the bombings, their victory was constrained by the president’s unwillingness to topple the Iranian regime.
That didn’t hurt the non-interventionist wing of the party. The doves could easily have rallied when the president limited his strikes, gave proper warning, de-escalated in the region, and publicly chastised an Israeli government long used to public deference from the Oval Office. Instead, the non-interventionists’ reputational wounds were self-inflicted.
While there were well-reasoned arguments against regime change (or war at all), Republican doves panicked. Hyperbole dominated. Comparisons to the Iraq War quagmire and even predictions of World War III abounded. The crack-up wasn’t even constrained to the usual anonymous corners of X — some of the most effective advocates of non-interventionism were guilty of emotional outbursts.
It’s understandable to distrust American intelligence agencies’ calls for intervention in Muslim states. It’s also understandable to distrust America’s more prominent Israel-security advocates, who often lack the prudent restraint practiced by the Jewish state’s own wartime prime minister.
Calls for war to prevent weapons of mass destruction are easy emotional triggers for those old enough to remember the post-9/11 call to battle. But that doesn’t justify showing your butt in the manner that so many did. The neoconservatives are not back in power — but the already vulnerable non-interventionists inflicted a lot of unnecessary damage on their reputations and influence, at least for the near future. You can only predict world war so many times.
Meanwhile, the Democrats’ civil war is over. Whatever comes next from the American left is merely a mop-up action. A defeat in the next presidential election might change this dynamic, but that’s more than three years away — and the ingredients needed for a less radical Democratic Party are dying, not growing.
Republicans still have a choice ahead. The non-interventionist purists imploded this time, but their allies in top White House positions performed their duties admirably and professionally, while President Trump powerfully restated his case for projecting power without nation-building — an important thing in a dangerously interconnected world. The fate of the non-interventionists will be decided when, and if, a Republican wins the presidency in ’28. And that’s a long way off.
Daniel McCarthy in Compact: How Trump surprised hawks and doves
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