Trump’s MAGA imprint on GOP strong now, but will it last? Experts weigh in
President Donald Trump recently hyped a new national poll which indicates an increasing percentage of Republicans now identify as MAGA supporters.
The president, in a social media post, pointed to what he said was “tremendous support” for MAGA, which is the acronym for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
“I am not, at all, surprised!!!” Trump wrote, days ahead of the 100-days milestone.
The poll indicated that 71% of Republicans now identify as MAGA supporters, up from 55% in November.
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The NBC News survey is the latest piece of evidence of Trump’s extremely firm grip over the GOP, and his remaking of the Republican Party in his image, a transformation that started with the president’s initial White House victory in 20216.
While the president repeatedly teases the possibility of running for re-election in 2028, the reality is that serving a third term is clearly prohibited by the Constitution under the 22nd Amendment.
So what happens to Trump’s MAGA movement and America First agenda after he departs the White House?
“The Republican Party will never go back to what it was. The old Republican Party of [former longtime Senate GOP leader] Mitch McConnell run by Washington elites died forever in 2024,” longtime Republican consultant Alex Castellanos told Fox News Digital.
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Castellanos, a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns, emphasized that “the Republican Party of Donald Trump is alive and growing out in America.”
And he made the case that “what happened in 2024 is that what was a man became a movement.”
David Kochul, another longtime Republican strategist with plenty of experience on the presidential campaign trail, concurred that “we’re not going back to what the party looked like in 2012. That’s for sure. We’re going forward to something new and different.”
Even a vocal Republican critic of Trump agrees.
Former congressman and former two-term Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who launched an unsuccessful 2024 Republican presidential nomination bid, acknowledged that “those who want the GOP to go a different direction from the MAGA leadership of President Trump are now fighting an uphill battle.”
“Trump has found his stride with his anti-immigrant message and it is overshadowing the chaos from his super-charged tariff war and its impact on the economy,” Hutchinson told Fox News Digital.
Whoever succeeds Trump as GOP standardbearer – be it heir apparent Vice President JD Vance or someone else – won’t be Trump.
“Trump is such a unique actor and figure. He can’t be replicated,” Kochul stressed. “Nobody can be the next Donald Trump. That’s not possible. He’s singular.”
But his movement will have some staying power.
“Just like the Reagan Revolution, Trump’s legacy and messaging will prevail beyond his last day in office,” Dave Carney, another longtime Republican consultant and presidential campaign trail veteran, told Fox News.
But Carney argued that Trump’s legacy may “wane over years unless the next Republican president continues it.”
“Is it going to be as hot and heavy as it is now without his personality? Carney asked.
Answering his own question, he said, “No. You need to have a messenger to carry that theme.”
But Castellanos noted that Trump has “spawned a new younger generation of MAGA leaders who will carry on the MAGA movement long after Trump.”
Pointing to Vance and others, Castellanos described “a fresh generation of MAGA.”
“The players on the MAGA farm team are now playing major league ball,” he said.
Kochul, looking to the future of the GOP, said that “it will be more populist, whomever emerges.”
And as for those future leaders, he suggested that “we’ve got a lot of great leadership and a great bench.”
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Hutchinson, a former U.S. attorney under Ronald Reagan and high-ranking official in George W. Bush’s administration, also weighed in on the future of Trump’s MAGA movement.
“Whether Trump’s dominance continues beyond the next few years depends upon the tolerance level of the GOP base on Trump’s view that ‘he is the law’ rather than respecting the separation of powers that have served our country well,” Hutchinson said.
