Republican Betrayal: The Sequel

“What America needs now- and can have- is a counter coalition in opposition to the welfare- warfare state.” – The Betrayal of the American Right

On August 1, 2026, former Georgia House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a picture from Tucker Carlson’s Maine compound proffering a future political alternative to the current binary choices.  Included in the photo were fellow Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie and former Trump Administration Official, Joe Kent.  As Trump’s MAGA party drifts further away from their America First promises, another shift in party platforms is bound to happen. 

For the past century, a continual restructuring of the two-party system in the United States has evolved in response to world, domestic, and cultural events.

From the early 1900’s until the mid-1950s, the Republican brand, called the Old Right, advocated for a limited constitutional government and an anti-war foreign policy in response to Progressive Era policies.  By mid-century, the anti-establishment Old Right would also oppose FDR’s New Deal.  At the same time, the Old Left began dabbling in socialism and communism to address class struggles, as it shifted its support to labor unions, workers' rights, and redistribution schemes to level the playing field. 

With the expansion of Communism in Europe, the New Right shifted toward a strong foreign policy, ridding itself of its anti-war past. By adopting a neoconservative agenda to confront the Cold War, the right would begin focusing excessively on forever wars.  On the domestic front, the left’s shift on cultural issues would prompt a more traditional conservatism regarding social values.  As such, the right would take a more pro-statist position, believing that wielding power was now needed to address the issues of the day.

Across the aisle, the emerging but short-lived New Left broke ties with Marxist authoritarianism and focused on more democratic solutions to the economy and citizens' concerns.  Its focus also shifted to cultural and social justice issues, including race and gender, along with an anti-imperialist position as they opposed the Vietnam War.  As a revolt from the right’s new neoconservative plans, many anti-war rightists found a temporary home here with the Left.

As the New Left declined, the Libertarian movement formed a party of its own in 1971, focused on isolationist foreign policy and anti-collectivist domestic policy based on the Austrian economic theory of laissez-faire. 

With Donald Trump’s MAGA arrival in 2016, another shift began with his America First nationalist focus and anti-interventionist foreign policy.  During his first term in office, Trump was a rare modern president to not only start a new war, but also to begin withdrawals from both Afghanistan and Iraq, calling himself a peace president.  In his second term, however, warfare would once again divide the right when Trump began his war of choice with Iran.  Whether unable or unwilling, Trump has also done little to end the Russia/Ukraine war that began under Biden in 2021.  With his almost exclusive focus on foreign policy, Trump’s retreat from his America First promises has resulted in the splintering of the Neocons and the America First coalition.

With promises made and promises abandoned, both parties are merely rearranging their policies, like deck chairs on the Titanic, leaving room on the Left for a new, modern version of Democratic Socialism to grow and fester. 

For the growing number of the politically homeless in search of a party, the picture at Tucker Carlson’s home offers some promise.  Rather than choosing based on Right or Left, we must focus instead on the bad ideas that each continues to offer and finally break free from a century of unfulfilled dogma.