https://time.com/5884030/republican-party-of-donald-trump/
If you were tuning into American politics for the first time to watch
this week’s GOP convention, you’d be excused for your confusion over
how the Republican Party proposes to run the country. There is no
official platform.
The planks seem constructed out of personality and feelings, not policy
or details. During his three-plus years in office, its leader,
President Donald Trump, has erased
any lingering doubts that the Republican Party is functioning as more
than an appendage of the Trump identity, and that it might be beholden
to his brand of gut-driven politics for years.
In accepting this reality, Republicans may have made a deal that
could give them another four years in the White House, but will set them
back decades. After all, Trump won’t be around forever to marshal his
supporters’ votes with the flair of a reality show star, and a
second-term Trump will have nothing to lose in thrashing norms and
institutions the GOP has backed for generations. The party that lionized
Ronald Reagan’s demand that Moscow “tear down this wall” in Berlin is
now silent when Vladimir Putin’s chief rival is poisoned.