The Republicans at a crossroads and three names for the future. Interview with George Will

Los Angeles. Mid-term elections are taking place today. After two years of aggressive upheavals to the rule of law and international alliances, the US Congress may no longer be controlled by the Republicans. We discussed this with George F. Will, a conservative columnist for the Washington Post. The polls had Trump trailing. They also had him losing against Kamala Harris, but then he won. “Polls have two problems. Trump’s voters do not trust anything to do with the media, and so they are reluctant to speak to pollsters. And then mobile phones have made polling more difficult; in the past, people were phoned at home and were easy to reach. Polls aren’t infallible, and they’re more problematic than in the past, but they’re the best tool we have,” says Will, a Pulitzer Prize winner and the adviser who prepared Ronald Reagan for his 1980 debate against Jimmy Carter. In 2016, he distanced himself from the party, becoming an independent. Some Republican Party candidates have started to distance themselves from Trump this time round: “It’s a good sign. Even if this independence stems not from courage but from fear. Trump kicked off this mid-term campaign by saying: ‘Treat me as if I were on the ballot paper’, and the Democrats said: ‘Yes, of course, treat him as if he were on the ballot paper; let’s make this election a referendum on Trump’.” By combining the war with Iran with inflation, “Trump has made his presence toxic in the public mind. And all Republicans know that, because of the 22nd Amendment, in two years and a few months Trump will have to go.”

Many are wondering what the future holds for the party following these years of the MAGA movement. “It’s really too early to say. If J. D. Vance were to be the next Republican candidate for the White House – and in this day and age, vice-presidents have a major advantage – from 2016 probably right up until 2032, the Republican Party will be under the influence of the MAGA movement. However, I have the feeling that J. D. Vance is a very weak political force; most people shun him.” Do Americans want change? “They’re not angry, but they’re exhausted and embarrassed. And when an exhausted and embarrassed nation thinks about 2028 – that is, the next presidential election – it says: ‘Enough is enough, we don’t want any more chaos’, and right now Vance is synonymous with chaos.”

Will is convinced that the Democrats can win – indeed, that they will probably win in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But what they will be able to achieve with a ‘divided government’ is not easy to understand: ‘Trump has governed almost exclusively by presidential decrees,’ says Will. ‘He has had just one legislative success, which is the Big Beautiful Bill, full of tax cuts. But for the rest, he’s done everything through executive orders, many of which are unconstitutional, as the courts have ruled’. As with birthright citizenship and tariffs. ‘But I don’t think Trump has anything left in his political agenda. What else is there for him to do? What else can he do with presidential executive orders?’, says Will.

The likely next Democratic Speaker of the House has said that as soon as they gain a majority, they will seek to oust members of the government, such as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. “I can’t think of a single senior executive in history who has been removed through impeachment,” explains Will: “And if the Democrats make the colossal mistake again of trying to launch an impeachment against Trump, the country will throw up its hands in exasperation because they won’t have the numbers in the Senate anyway” (two-thirds of those present are required). There is now a new force within the Democratic coalition – the socialists – whom the White House criticises harshly. “It’s rather difficult for the Trump Administration to condemn socialism, given that its government has accumulated shareholdings and ownership stakes in over 35 private companies. If that isn’t socialism, I don’t know what socialism is,” says the veteran libertarian Will with a wry smile.

“And it must also be said that, so far, the democratic socialists have won in very ‘blue’ states – that is, states that were already Democratic – and not a single socialist has won a new seat for the party in the House of Representatives or the Senate.” In short, the Mamdanis only work where the Democrats are already winning. But if the Democrats win the mid-terms, does that mean they’ve learnt something following Kamala Harris’s defeat? “I don’t think the Democrats are capable of learnt anything these days. They’re too lost in their intellectual silence,” says the journalist. “Trump is losing because he promised ‘no more wars’ and then went to war with Iran; he said he would reduce inflation, yet inflation has risen well above 3 per cent – that is, above the 2 per cent target set by the Federal Reserve.”

But he has done some good things too. “Trump has one major achievement, namely control of the border (with Mexico). But once he’d done that, he lost one of his key political themes. It’s similar to what happened with Margaret Thatcher: she’d said she would rein in the welfare state and reduce inflation. Once she’d done that, people said: ‘Well, now we no longer need Margaret Thatcher’.” Not that the two are comparable, though, because “Trump cares about only one thing: Trump. He doesn’t care about ideas, the future or the country. He’s a perfect narcissist, 100 per cent. Trying to place him on a political spectrum is impossible”. But if he loses, will there be another 6 January? “I don’t think so”. There’s talk of money from tech billionaires, but for Will, money is a media obsession; “in fact, I think that in places like Texas, Musk’s money actually benefits the Democrats”.

Although George Will voted for Joe Biden and has left the party, he is still a proud conservative. Trump has alienated many old-school Republicans who have refused to obey or fall in line with his populist rhetoric. But Will, who is optimistic, says there are still various people in politics, within the Republican Party, who might not so much destroy the MAGA movement as “temper and tame it”. He cites three names: Glenn Youngkin, former governor of Virginia; Brian Kemp, governor of Georgia; Doug Ducey, former governor of Arizona. “And there are others.” Because in this era of American politics, “the supremacy of the presidency, the presidential system, has prevailed; so all it takes is a single person to change the general tone to make a difference.” There is a silver lining to the bad news. The bad news is that a wildcard president like Trump was able to change the tone and behaviour of the entire country. The good news is that if he could do it, a completely different person could do the same, and change everything, bringing the country – and the party – back to normal.”