It’s become yet another subsidiary of Trump Inc.
When historians chronicle the end of the Grand Old Party, they may mark 2024 as the turning point. Something called the Republican Party will surely exist for years to come, like a legacy brand subsumed by a competitor, but it appears to be coming to its end as a functional party. Instead, the Republican Party has become just another subsidiary of Donald Trump Inc.
Yesterday, Trump announced his effective takeover of the Republican National Committee, endorsing Michael Whatley, the chair of the North Carolina GOP, as chair; his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair; and one of his top campaign advisers, Chris LaCivita, as chief operating officer. LaCivita will reportedly also remain with the Trump presidential campaign, splitting time. The current chair of the party, Ronna McDaniel, is stepping down because of pressure from Trump.
Officially, these are only recommendations, but they seem nearly certain to become reality.
You can thank the religious right.
Christianity as we know it was canonized shortly after the emperor of Rome converted.
Unsurprisingly, they canonized traditions portraying a divine monarchy for which patriarchal monarchies on Earth were effectively a mirror. The emperor was picked by God to rule and that form of rule reflects the divine.
They excluded texts that had Jesus suggesting a very different attitude towards dynastic monarchies, such as this gem from a text eventually banned from possession on penalty of death (we only have this line because a single person buried a copy in a jar in the 4th century which survived):
While less progressive by modern stances, if this were said during Pilate’s reign it would have been extremely transgressive. Tiberius, the emperor at that time, was the first emperor effectively inheriting the kingdom rather than ruling because of accomplishments and while initially mismanaging it, by the time Pilate was appointed Tiberius had just completely abandoned the role to go party all the time, but never relinquishing the role of emperor to another.
So a statement about how someone should be appointed to rule based on merit and not birth, and that those who rule should relinquish the power rather than hold it indefinitely - was quite the rebellious kind of sentiment. The sort of thing which might even get the person saying it publicly killed by the Roman empire.
Unfortunately, that sentiment wasn’t preserved and instead “monarchy is divine” got amplified, which contributed to millennia of human suffering and now today the evangelicals are frothing at the mouth to reinstate a supposed divine monarchy on Earth, and the neo-fascists have co-opted that movement.