How Obama’s Legacy ‘Trump’ed The Republicans

A mere technicality now rests between Donald Trump and the Republican presidential nomination. But what exactly drove Republican voters to choose a brash reality television star with inflammatory views on minorities, women and the welfare state? How did the party of conservative politics once headed by Abraham Lincoln come to this?

History has shown that Nero rose towards the fall of the Roman Empire, and Trump’s rise heralds the same for the Republicans. It reveals the dearth of national leaders in the party, now defined by the worst aspects of right wing political thought. For the Democrats, on the other hand, leaving the Republican Party in such a state of political and moral bankruptcy is President Barack Obama’s greatest legacy.

Under Obama’s presidency, multiple social issues which were once politically grey areas became more defined along party lines, with the Democrats actively championing the social justice narrative. In his second term, Obama’s ideological purity on healthcare, immigration reform, same-sex rights, women’s rights, gun control and diplomacy struck a chord with Democrat voters who yearned for a steadfast Commander-in-Chief, especially after a first term of politicking and flip flops.

In January, Obama passed executive orders tightening gun regulation after an emotional State of the Union speech, remembering the victims of the many horrible mass shootings during his tenure and calling for an end to the inaction. In October 2015, Obama chose diplomacy over military action to bring Iran to the negotiating table, achieving the historic nuclear deal to curb the development of its nuclear arsenal and reduce tensions with Teheran.

Obama energized his push for affordable healthcare against an adamant Republican Party, allowing the ‘socialist’ jibes to roll off his back. In June 2015, the US Supreme Court backed Obama’s stance that healthcare was not a privilege, but a right for all American citizens. Obama also pushed the Democratic Party’s environment agenda, issuing an executive order in March 2015 to cut the Federal government’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent over the next decade.

In 2013, Obama’s executive order overhauled the immigration system. He gave parents of American citizens and legal resident children who have lived in the US for more than five years relief from deportation if they register with the government, undergo background checks and pay taxes. The order was aimed at allowing immigration officials focus on deporting felons instead of families.

In 2012, at the beginning of his second term, Obama became the first sitting President to support same-sex marriage and repealed the controversial ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy for the American military. Few years later in July 2015, the US Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the United States.

All of these initiatives in Obama’s second term allowed him to settle the Democratic Party in the centre-left of American politics. It wasn’t an easy ride. Obama suffered politically, namely in the 2014 midterm elections, when the Republicans took control of Congress.

Nonetheless, Obama set the narrative for the Democrats ahead of the Presidential elections, aligning the party to the sentiments of its voter base and core social justice agenda. In 2016, the Democratic mantra has found pan-American support. Obama 2.0 allowed a Democratic idealist like Bernie Sanders to launch his campaign and achieve significant traction with voters. It even pushed Hillary Clinton to end flip-flops on key social issues and stay true to the basic Democratic agenda.

As Obama rooted the Democratic Party’s identity, he also pushed the Republicans to do the same in order to pose an ideological counter, and both sides began deviating from the political centre. However, to the dismay of the Republican establishment, Donald Trump has succeeded in anchoring the party’s identity in the extreme right of American politics.

Trump is a sharp counter to a resurgent Democratic Party, but his impetuous, hateful, apocalyptic narrative has reduced the party of the conservative ethos to the collective of the irrational. The Republican frontrunner is more of a foolhardy godman than a silver-tongued preacher, and has rendered veteran party leaders with administrative experience politically inert.

Republicans must also fear Trump, as he is first a businessman. If he faces defeat, he can cut his losses and walk away from the Presidential race without a single thought, but he will leave the GOP’s credibility crippled for years to come.

Trump’s rise has become a joke around the world, with no world leader even mulling the prospect of dealing with the reality television star as commander-in-chief of the United States. This is the consequence of the Republican party opposing Obama as he tried to be on the right side of history and channel the will of the majority of American citizens over multiple politically divisive issues.

This is Obama’s legacy, negating the Republican Party’s clout across demographics, pushing them to the edge to survive and find refuge in the toxic narrative of Donald Trump. Obama caused the Republicans to create their Frankenstein and lament as the monster runs amok.