Book Review: The Emerging Populist Majority & the American Right’s Path To Victory

Donald Trump shocked the world throughout his awe-inspiring third bout for the highest office in the land. The President’s campaign was filled with explosive media highlights from his opponents’ career-ending performances at the debates, a fateful brush with an assassin’s bullet, the rebellion of American billionaires against the Democratic Party, and a home-run rally at Madison Square Garden.

The Republican Party’s resounding victory this winter at all representative levels of the federal government of the United States, and their root-and-branch spring-cleaning over the coming months ought to make one wonder: how did this happen?

Published in early 2024, the book The Emerging Populist Majority, sought to explain how the Republican Party was becoming the predominant political force in the United States, and accurately forecasted President Donald Trump’s victory.

Co-authored by Gavin Wax and Troy Olson, the text analyses American electoral history, and draws conclusions as to what the future political landscape of the country may look like. Its central thesis, an inversion of that put forward by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book, The Fourth Turning, posits that the demographic, economic, and social topography of the United States are coalescing towards a political realignment which only the Republican Party can fulfill.

That political realignment is one of the elite against the people, though critically Wax and Olson explain that membership of the elite is predicated on the mere attainment of wealth, but one largely driven by social status.

Wax and Olson, building on extant political science literature of civic patterns in American electoral history, demonstrate how the burgeoning Fourth Civic Order has emerged from its predecessors. The First Civic Order beginning with the American Revolution met its conclusion at the advent of the U.S. Civil War. Largely characterised by the balance between weak federal authorities and assertive State governments, this period was critical for the formation of American identity as the United States expanded across the Western Territories.

Throughout the Second and Third Civic Orders, the theme of federal government centralisation dominated the political dialogue of these eras. From the Civil War to the New Deal, the Second Civic Order brought expanded federal powers, and introduced greater regulation and industrialisation to the U.S. economy. The Third Civic Order, with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, continued this trend, introducing further federal oversight of State governance, and introduced schemes such as Social Security to overhaul the role of the federal government in the lives of U.S. citizens.

Analysis of American political trends evokes the work of French political philosopher Betrand de Jouvenel, who believed the primary theme of modern governance structures was the centralisation of power. In the case of the United States, this is certainly true. However, what have been the societal implications of this trend in American governance?

Power in the United States, centralised in the hands of the federal government and the individuals who find themselves at its helm, has found itself a hereditary commodity passed from each generation to the next. A number of dynasties - the Kennedy, Bush, Clinton, and Roosevelt families spring to mind - have held dramatic influence over national political affairs, constituting a national elite.

Though the capture of political power by families is not a new trend in American history, the modern iteration of this phenomenon has taken on, at times, a sinister character. Back-room business deals, hidden email servers, and illicit conspiring with U.S. intelligence for political gain are just some of the dirty tactics American elites have utilised to preserve their power.

In decades to come, historians may argue that President Donald Trump rang the death knell of this dark period of American politics, and by returning power to the people, ushered in a new American “golden age.”

One of the defining trends of the Third Civic Order was the Democratic Party’s role as the de facto choice for immigrants in the United States. These support networks ran deep across the country, with Black, Asian, and Hispanic communities too, but these trends have been flipped on their head.

As Wax and Olson highlight: Hispanic voters are religious and socially conservative; many Asian-American voters are high-earners, entrepreneurs, and support lower taxes.

Key to the Republican Party’s capture of these voter blocs is simply that the Democratic Party has become the party of freaks and weirdos. Too willing to purge its membership rolls for the sake of ideological purity, and quick to pounce on their would-be political allies when convenient, the DNC embodies the machine politics of the past - not even astroturfed media campaigns and celebrity endorsements could save them.

Wax and Olson argue that the defining characteristic of the Fourth Civic Order is the populist fervour that President Donald Trump unleashed throughout his thunderous 2016 campaign. Furthermore, in this dynamic of the elite versus the people, the dismantling of federal control over American citizens’ lives remains a prescient theme in their populist endeavours to restore U.S. politics to its core ethos and repeal the administrative misadventures of the New Deal.

However, critical to Wax and Olson’s text is not that these changes are inevitable, but that the Republican Party should seize these opportunities, reform itself from its past failures, and truly earn the confidence of the American people.

Broader themes of society and government separate the United States’ historic civic orders, but what stands out about the fourth, is the assertion that America is in the midst of a political reshaping that with the correct stimulus could become the Fourth Civic Order. For the Republicans it appears this restructuring is shifting in their favour - yet will the Grand Old Party implement the internal reforms necessary to seize the moment?

The reformation of the GOP is a process, and it is one perennially mired by self-styled “reformists” who inevitably derail or obstruct the process, whether intentionally or not. The Republican Party of the past has proven itself far too pragmatic on issues that it should be uncompromising on, and too ideological on matters which hold little interest to the American people. Under the leadership of Donald Trump, it appears Republicans are adopting the advice of their party’s young scions.

America’s current political alignment is a decades-long development that has recently begun to bear fruit for the right. This realignment is not based on solely political or administrative gripes with the governing ethos of the United States, but is the product of an existential anxiety tied to Americans’ perception of their civilisation

To answer this call, the Republican Party must offer the American people not just low taxes and a free market economy, anti-woke and anti-corruption policies, or the mass-deportation of illegal immigrants, but the solemn guarantee that the United States of America is a nation, with a unique history, and most important of all, a people who are bound by blood to their nation’s history, founding, and vision for the future.

That electoral realignment appears complete, let us hope it is not undone by the folly of man or the temptation of fate.