US Sutra | Super Tuesday: Trump as the Republican presidential candidate

Donald Trump and Narendra Modi are both considered conservative or right-wing leaders. But they could not be more dissimilar. One is flamboyant, the other sober; one shoots his mouth off, the other cannot be found making a single indiscreet statement. Though both are constantly in the news and are international media personalities in their own right, one is constantly controversial, the other consistently charismatic.

One was born well-to-do, already a tycoon in his twenties, the other rose from stark poverty to the heights of political and social power. One is extravagant, living lavishly, the other is abstemious and frugal. One has had a colourful, some would say scandalous love life, with multiple marriages and several children from different spouses, the other is known as a lifelong celibate, despite being married. One embodies the capitalistic, consumeristic ethos, the other is practically a renunciate. Without disrespecting one, we might even say they are as different as chalk and cheese.

But there is one respect in which they are similar. They have totally upended their respective political parties, the very vehicles of their spectacular success. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is as different from Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s as Trump’s is from Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party. In my last column I wrote about how Reagan rode to power in 1980 and in two terms established the United States as the dominant power in the world. He adopted a tough foreign policy against the erstwhile Soviet Union, pushing it to what some would say its overdue demise. He also championed free-market capitalism and globalization. Reagan was socially and culturally conservative, coming down heavily against abortion and LGBTQ activism in the name of supposedly traditional American values.

Trump, in contrast, is a nativist. Recently he said in his own blunt and undiplomatic way that he didn’t really care what the Russians did with Ukraine. He is also an economic protectionist, particularly when it comes to targeting Chinese goods flooding the US after his predecessors shifted the entire manufacturing process of the country to cheaper labor markets overseas. Trump also doesn’t care much to be seen as an anti-abortionist let alone anti-LGBTQ. His solid American values, instead, are about championing the rights of ordinary Americans who tend to feel left out — Social Security and Medicare, the US version of welfare statism. America for Americans is what Trump stands for. One might even go so far as to say that he is the most anti-immigration of any US president so far, especially if the immigrants are illegals.

Modi too has totally reinvented the BJP, which in the Vajpayee era, was often a saffron-hued version of the Congress party. Arguably, Vajpayee, the orator-poet and parliamentarian par excellence, was closer to our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, than any other BJP leader. Modi is unapologetic majoritarian and has normalised Hindutva-driven development as the nation’s ideology displacing both secularism and socialism, which Indira Gandhi had smuggled into the Preamble of the Constitution.

Modi has also transformed India strategically and diplomatically in ways that Vajpayee would not have dreamed of. Gone are the days of appeasement and wishy-washy non-alignment. India is no longer middling in the sense of mediocre power. It is a key player in the emerging global reset, a balancing power and swing state, which, in its own sphere of influence, is also the enforcer of the rule-based international order.

The old Republicans considered Trump the maverick outsider whose multiple and compulsive indiscretions made him a liability. In a sense, they were relieved when he lost. It was the end of the most controversial and tumultuous presidency in the history of the Union. But today, the Grand Old Party is undoubtedly Trump’s demesne. He has come to command the loyalty of the rank and file. Why? Because they believe only he can see them back in power. Afterall, despite gargantuan odds, not to speak of endless lawsuits and multiple attempts to disqualify him, he is the last man standing as far as the Republican presidential nomination is concerned.

Literally. Because on Tuesday, Nikki Haley, his last challenger, effectively stepped down. Of the 1,215 delegates needed for the nomination, Trump has already scored over 1000. Haley only managed 89. That is why March 5th is known as Super Tuesday. By now, both the Democratic incumbent and the Republicans challenger have more or less clinched their places on the US presidential ballot. Yes, it will be another Biden vs Trump faceoff, a rematch if you will. And this time, it is Trump who is likely to storm his way back to the White House.

Wouldn’t that be sweet revenge for someone who had two impeachment motions against him and continues to be charged with inciting and insurrection to remain in power after he lost to Biden four years back. With his three-time nomination as the Republican presidential nominee, his hold over the party is incontrovertible. As Steven Bannon, his former campaign strategist put it, “In 2016, Trump launched a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. That takeover is now complete.” Another commentator termed it “Trump’s hammerlock on Republicans’ loyalty.”

In more senses than one, Reagan’s party is over. Reagan, we might recall, died twenty years back, on June 5, 2004, at the age of 93. This is indeed a different America than what I knew in the 1980’s. Come November, in an off chance, even if Trump loses, future and emerging Republican leaders will resemble him more and more. The era of Republican institutions and institutionalists has ended. Only to be replaced by personality-driven politics.

In this respect, though, India has been ahead of the US. It is not politics but personalities that overshadow the electoral landscape. They always have. And today, it is Narendra Modi that strides the Indian political panorama as a colossus, resembling the gigantic statue of unity that he built to honour Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s greatest unifier of the independence era. No wonder, Modi’s election as head of government in 2014 marks, as many have observed, a radical break with the past and the beginning of India’s Second Republic. While some may not like it, something similar may happen in the US in November 2024 if Donald Trump is re-elected to the most powerful office in the world.

The author is Director of Education, Access Health Care Physicians LLC, Spring Hill, Florida. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._