The MAGA Coalition Crackup
Trumpism isn’t dead. But the 2024 coalition the president pulled together may be impossible to pull off again
The Iran war isn’t the success President Trump expected it to be. It’s upended the global economy, failed to win over the American public, and has no clear end in sight. It’s also caused deep unrest within Trump’s political coalition, inspiring some to proclaim the “end of Trumpism.”
Most conservative commentators recognize there’s a problem and wish to restore the coalition that won the 2024 election in a landslide. Writer Auron MacIntyre argues the best way to heal MAGA is to kick out all the neocons. This idea would be great, except it assumes that people not named Trump can decide what’s MAGA and what’s not. For both good and ill, Trump is the only one with that power.
This presents obvious problems for a political movement that plans to continue after the Donald leaves office. A personality cult can’t survive without its personality in the arena.
It’s clear the 2024 MAGA coalition isn’t going to return. Something else will take its place once Trump leaves office. The successor coalition will bear similarities with Trumpism and its policy agenda. It’s unlikely it will be anti-Trump in either a Never Trumper or Insane Clown Party way. Beyond that, its exact character still remains a battle waiting in the future.
There are a few facts to establish in this debate:
Trumpism is still very much alive. His core supporters, as every poll shows, are sticking with him. There’s no viable challenger on the Right to its hold over the GOP and conservatism.
Trump’s coalition besides his core supporters has suffered losses. Polls show independents, Hispanics, and young men have soured on Trump and are unlikely to vote for Republicans in the same numbers they did in 2024.
The reasons for this dissension are primarily due to the sluggish economy, the Iran war, and the ICE raids.
The Online Right is also upset with Trump, but their disagreements–besides the war–don’t align with the majority of voters turning away from MAGA. This sphere is upset with Trump not deporting enough migrants. With independents, it’s the perception the president is deporting too many. In general, elements of the Online Right have turned on Trump for not being radical enough while real-world voters think the president is too radical.
These points can explain how the MAGA coalition is an unwieldy beast with multiple conflicting interests and priorities. Even prior to the Iran war, it looked to be in trouble for 2026 and 2028. The war only furthered the discontent. But it must be remembered that the onlinesphere doesn’t properly represent the electoral troubles the coalition faces. The “moderate” opinions of those fleeing MAGA are better represented by Joe Rogan and brocasters, who equally attack deportations and foreign interventions.
This is not an argument to cater to the mercurial whims of the brocasters. Far from it. Their political opinions are poorly formed and too often shaped by media outrage. But one must acknowledge that they reflect dissent within the coalition. This demographic had largely ditched MAGA before the Iran war. It was going to be extremely difficult to keep this sphere loyal to Trump.
It would be a wise political decision for Trump to end the war as soon as possible. The midterms could turn into a bloodbath if the conflict wrecks the economy. But no matter what happens, the 2024 coalition is probably not coming back.
Purging or sidelining the people who egged on Trump’s Iran mistake would be great, but it will still be insufficient to restore the coalition to its old state. Many of the new voters Trump drew in 2024 would still have their issues with the MAGA agenda, as would the anti-Trump elements of the Online Right. The chief problem with MAGA for these two sides is increasingly Trump and his agenda, not just with one bad policy or bad elements within the coalition.
The influencers fantasizing about impeaching Trump and repeatedly shouting “MAGA is dead” indicate their lack of desire to rejoin the movement. Their conditions for returning is to remove Trump. That’s not going to happen.
MAGA was able to unite all these different elements together in 2024 due to opposition to woke and the disaster that was the Biden administration. It was easy to gather support when there was a clear enemy. But once people forgot about Biden’s open border policies and oppressive wokeness in the culture, the glue keeping these various elements within MAGA dissipated. Without the common enemy in sight, everyone could focus on what they don’t like about the current administration. Thus, we get the divisions within the MAGA coalition.
These problems weren’t apparent in the first term when Trump wasn’t really doing anything and he had weaker control over the Right. But the average voter prefers a president who doesn’t rock the boat, and the great economy of the late 2010s was enough to keep MAGA voters relatively happy. In addition, there wasn’t much space for criticism of Trump from the Right for a variety of reasons. It’s a different situation today.
The 2024 MAGA coalition is unlikely to be replicated. Winning elections and governing the country will probably require a different style that can draw in new voters. We’re not going to get another personality to rival Trump’s charisma. The future right-wing coalition will need to build a coherent-policy agenda that dispenses with past failures and attracts a broad array of voters. It won’t be a replica of pre-Trump conservatism, nor will it be the Insane Clown Party. It will build off Trumpism to make a movement that can sustain itself beyond one man.
For now, MAGA is the only real game in town for the American Right. It may have lost its charm, it may have lost some of its supporters, and it may be popular on the internet to attack. But there’s no other vehicle for advancing a right-wing agenda. It’s obvious it’s heavily dependent on Trump himself. But as long as he’s the president, he–and no one else–will decide what it is.
You can now preorder Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.