The Republican Party is Dead

In 1972, cognitive psychologist Irving Janis published "Victims of Groupthink," analyzing how smart people in cohesive groups make catastrophically bad decisions. His example was the Bay of Pigs invasion, where Kennedy's brilliant advisers convinced themselves that a small band of exiles could overthrow Castro's Cuba. Kennedy's advisers at least had the excuse of being smart people who made dumb decisions. In February 2025, we're dealing with an example far more grotesque: the hollow shell of the Republican Party, now a personality cult with tax-exempt status, unanimously backing Donald Trump's plan to seize Gaza and transform it into a luxury resort.

It's a fever dream convergence of real estate development and war crimes. Trump, sitting beside Netanyahu, declared his plan to "take over" Gaza and transform it into "the Riviera of the Middle East." And Secretary of State Marco Rubio was ready and willing to be a Good Doggo.

"America stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again," he declared, presumably while somewhere in The Hague, a war crimes prosecutor started a new file.

The same Marco Rubio consistently emphasized international law's significance throughout his political career. As a U.S. senator, he advocated for a rules-based global order and was vocal about holding nations accountable to international legal standards. He criticized China's actions in the South China Sea, citing violations of international maritime law.

This is how the Republican Party died - with "leaders" like Rubio rushing to agree that forced population transfers and illegal territorial seizures are fine if they come with an oceanfront view. It's groupthink taken to an extreme, following one man's increasingly erratic train of thought.

The easy position is that Republican leaders are just cynically playing along, waiting for Trump's influence to fade. But that theory makes less sense with each passing day. When Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency in January 2025 and appointed Elon Musk to run it, traditional Republicans - any Republicans worth their salt - would have objected on multiple grounds: it's constitutionally questionable, it bypasses Congress, it puts a social media billionaire in charge of dismantling federal agencies. Instead, they celebrated.

Remember when Republicans spent eight years warning about Barack Obama's executive overreach? When every executive order was a step toward tyranny? Those voices now explain why the Constitution demands a strong executive who can "get things done without deep state interference." To call this hypocrisy is woefully inadequate - this is the complete abandonment of any prior core principles.

What happened to the conservative movement that produced William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek? The intellectual tradition that emphasized individual liberty, free markets, and constitutional limits on government power? It's been replaced by whatever Trump says conservatives believe today. When he imposes tariffs, free trade becomes a globalist plot. When he suggests seizing Gaza, international law becomes optional.

This intellectual solubility has been building for years. Republican leaders who championed the rule of law now argue that prosecuting Trump for any crime would be "divisive." Those who demanded Hillary Clinton's imprisonment for mishandling classified documents explain why Trump's storage of nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago was perfect document management. The party that impeached Bill Clinton for perjury now insists that lying under oath is fine if you're "fighting the deep state."

The transformation is so complete that even criticizing Trump's dinner companions has become taboo. When he dined with a white nationalist and a Holocaust denier, Republican leaders competed to explain why the real problem was the media reporting it. The party of moral values and personal responsibility now operates on a single principle: Trump is always right, and if he appears to be wrong, you must have misunderstood him.

Some readers will object that I'm mixing up correlation and causation. Maybe Republican leaders genuinely believe these are good ideas. But that requires us to believe that the entire party simultaneously and independently decided that international law is optional, federal agencies can be dissolved by tweet, and Gaza's highest purpose is as a luxury hotel destination.

You may think I'm being unfair. Political parties change positions all the time. Democrats who opposed gay marriage in 2008 championed it by 2012. Republicans who called Russia our greatest threat in 2012 started wearing "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat" shirts by 2018. But what's happening now is different in kind, not just degree.

The more pressing question is: what changed in the Republican Party's incentive structure? Political parties usually maintain some independence because different politicians face different local pressures. A senator from Maine doesn't usually vote like a senator from Alabama because their constituents want different things. But something has short-circuited this mechanism.

Janis identified eight symptoms of groupthink: illusions of invulnerability, collective rationalization, belief in inherent morality, stereotyped views of outsiders, direct pressure on dissenters, self-censorship, illusions of unanimity, and mind-guarding. 

Trump has become the Republican Party's defining reality, its moral center, its source of truth. When this cult-like devotion merges with Musk's control of X's 215 million users, it creates something unprecedented: technologically-enhanced groupthink in service of a personality cult.

The dynamic works like this: Trump makes a proclamation (let's say, turning Gaza into a luxury resort). In a normal political party, this would trigger debate, analysis, pushback. But in Trump's Republican Party, his words instantly become gospel. Musk, acting as both high priest and algorithmic enforcer, amplifies the message across X, creating what Janis called an "illusion of unanimity" by systematically promoting supporters and burying critics.

The result is "cascading conformity." Republican voters see only praise for Trump's idea. Republican politicians, seeing these voters' responses, fall in line. Those who don't face both social ostracism and algorithmic burial - Janis' "direct pressure on dissenters" upgraded for the digital age. The pressure creates self-censorship, which creates more apparent unanimity, which creates more pressure.

Trump's cult of personality adds a religious dimension. When Kennedy's advisers convinced themselves the Bay of Pigs invasion would work, they were at least trying to achieve a rational goal. When Trump's followers convince themselves that seizing Gaza for a resort is brilliant, they're not analyzing the plan's merits - they're demonstrating their faith.

Musk's dual role as platform owner and DOGE chief turns this faith into a self-reinforcing system. His algorithmic amplification makes Trump's ideas seem inevitable, ordained, correct by definition. The "collective rationalization" that Janis described becomes instant and automatic: Trump said it, therefore it must be right, and the algorithm will show you why.

This creates the new Republican "cult groupthink" - where Janis' symptoms merge with religious-style devotion and technological enforcement. The illusion of invulnerability becomes literal belief in Trump's infallibility. The belief in inherent morality becomes unshakeable faith that anything Trump wants must be moral. The stereotyped views of outsiders become algorithmically-enforced certainty that all critics are enemies.

Mind-guarding, which Janis saw as an informal group function, is Musk's literal job. He ensures that Trump's reality becomes everyone's reality through the mechanical application of algorithmic control. When he then receives government power through DOGE, it completes a cycle that transforms traditional groupthink into something more akin to technologically-enhanced religious orthodoxy.

The result is both a political party making bad decisions through group pressure, and a system where Trump's whims become doctrine, doctrine becomes algorithm, and algorithm becomes reality. Janis worried about groups suppressing dissent - but what happens when the very architecture of communication is redesigned to make dissent impossible?

This isn't normal political patronage - it's a new form of power consolidation that the Founders couldn't have imagined. James Madison designed a system where ambition would counteract ambition. But what happens when all ambitious Republicans learn that the path to power runs through complete alignment with Trump?

The Gaza "proposal" - if we can call it that - illustrates how this plays out in practice. Every Republican leader knows that transforming Gaza into a resort town while relocating its population would face enormous practical and legal challenges. The UN opposes it. Arab nations warn it could destabilize the region. European allies are horrified. But none of that matters because the only feedback loop that counts is the Trump-Musk-X ecosystem.

Consider DOGE's first major action: shutting down USAID and putting its employees on administrative leave without congressional approval. Legal experts call this "flatly illegal" - the kind of thing that would have sent Tea Party Republicans into apoplectic fits during Obama's presidency. But in 2025, Republican leaders compete to praise it as "bold executive action."

This is a new, decrepit and morally bankrupt form of political society - a loose collective of power fetishists in a closed information ecosystem that replaces traditional democratic feedback mechanisms.

Some will say I'm being alarmist. Haven't political parties always eventually returned to normal after periods of strong leadership? But this assumes the underlying mechanism of party politics - the need to respond to local pressures - remains intact. The Trump-Musk information ecosystem suggests it might not.

This makes traditional political analysis obsolete. We can't predict what Republicans will do by looking at polls, donor interests, or historical positions. The only reliable predictor is what Trump says, amplified by Musk, filtered through X, and fed back to voters in a closed loop.

I could end this with a stirring call about saving democracy or reviving the Republican Party. But that would miss the point. The Republican Party died the moment it transformed into a closed algorithmic feedback loop optimized for amplifying one man's whims. What replaced it isn't a political party - it's a new form of digital autocracy masquerading as an institution.

Janis would have understood. The Bay of Pigs wasn't just a bad decision - it was the product of a system that made bad decisions inevitable. Today's Republican Party isn't just following Trump - it's rebuilt itself into a system where following Trump is the only possible outcome.

Behind closed doors, the Republicans will tell you that this is temporary - that post-Trump, the party will return to normal. But institutions are easier to break than rebuild. The GOP has spent years telling its voters that principles don't matter, that consistency is for losers, that truth is whatever the leader says it is. How do you come back from that? How do you tell people who've learned to reject any information that contradicts Trump that facts and evidence matter again?

In Trump's eventual wake, something will replace the GOP - politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. But whatever emerges won't be the same party that once stood for limited government, free markets, and constitutional conservatism. It will resemble a coalition of wasteland marauders in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick.

In the meantime, we're left with a movement, not a party, built entirely around one man's ego, held together by the fear of his wrath and the cynical calculations of people who should know better. The Republican Party has been slaughtered. What remains is simply the Trump Party wearing its skin.

And if you think that's an exaggeration, ask yourself this: Can you name a single position that today's Republican Party would maintain if Trump tweeted against it tomorrow morning? Can you imagine any principle they wouldn't abandon if he demanded it? Is there any line they wouldn't cross?