A new Manhattan Institute survey analysis claims the future of the right lies with traditional Republicans, not the new forces brought forth by Donald Trump or the “Online Right.”
It shouldn’t count as a revelation that the average Republican isn’t a based social media poster. It’s obvious and it’s something your author has written about many times.
But the point being made by the Manhattan Institute is not simply that the offline right is very different from what we see on X. It’s that ordinary Republican voters want the old GOP back. The purpose of contrasting ordinary Republicans with the extremes of the online right is to subtly revive the lame conservatism Trump defeated in his primary battles.
The Manhattan Institute study identified two large blocs of GOP voters. One is the “Core Republicans,” which apparently make up 65 percent of the GOP electorate. The other is the “New Entrant Republicans,” a group comprising 29 percent of the coalition.
The Core Republicans are longstanding GOP voters who are “consistently conservative on economic, foreign policy, and social issues,” the report states. “They favor lower taxes, take a hawkish view of China, remain firmly pro-Israel, and are highly skeptical of progressive agendas on transgender and DEI issues.”
The New Entrants, as their name suggests, are recent GOP voters with more unorthodox views. “They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain,” the study finds. “They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies, more favorable toward China, more critical of Israel, and more liberal on issues ranging from migration to DEI initiatives.”
But, strangely enough, it’s also the demographic where a “significant share also report openly racist or antisemitic views and express potential support for political violence.” At the same time, it’s more “racially diverse” and younger than Core Republicans.
It’s hard to reconcile all these findings to discern a clear bloc of voters. They’re more racist, yet more diverse and progressive on DEI—how does that work?
It’s likely true this demographic is more anti-Israel and more conspiratorial than the typical Republican voter. But it’s hard to determine their concrete beliefs, besides that they are more “populist” in spirit and less committed to the old GOP.
The Manhattan Institute wants us to believe that the future of the right lies with the Core Republicans rather than the New Entrants. This was explained by the organization’s spokesman Jesse Arm in its public policy magazine, City Journal. Arm’s article appears to think the battle for the GOP is just between traditional Republicans and Nick Fuentes. He mocks the idea that the Fuentes fan—which he describes as a “twentysomething male Zoomer, still living at home and spending inordinate amounts of time online, and steadily dosing video games, pot, and porn”—is the future of the party. He conflates this caricature with the New Entrants to argue for the superiority of the Core Republicans.
[BLOCK]The loudest voices in the right-wing attention economy speak to, and for, a particular segment: younger men, often nonreligious, often alienated from institutions, steeped in Internet-fueled irony and grievance. Our survey suggests that they are numerous enough to matter.
But they are not the median Republican voter. The coalition’s beating heart remains the normie Republican Washington keeps forgetting: older, more churchgoing, more hawkish, more pro-Israel, and uninterested in burning the country down.[/BLOCK]
It is curious that the core features of ordinary Republicans are that they are “hawkish” and “pro-Israel.” It gives the game away for what kind of conservatism Arm desires. They want neoconservatism back, and imagine it’s what the base wants. This isn’t an accurate picture.
Ordinary Republicans are not as pro-Israel as they once were. In 2022, just 27 percent of Republicans had a negative view of Israel. Now it stands at 37 percent. Among Republicans under 50, half hold a negative view of the Jewish state. This is the future of the GOP. It doesn’t sound like “pro-Israel” will be one of their core tenets.
Republicans are notably less hawkish than they were in the George W. Bush era. A plurality of Republicans either want to cut or entirely eliminate funding for Ukraine. By comparison, a majority of Democrats want to increase funding for Ukraine. Republicans are less likely now to back NATO and other international commitments. Republicans are not as greatly concerned with foreign affairs as think tankers are. It was ranked near the bottom of issues that 2024 voters cared about.
The average Core Republican that Arm idolizes may not be an “isolationist,” but he’s likely to have questions about America’s relationship with Israel, NATO, and Ukraine. These matters also don’t animate regular voters as much as they do the pundits and analysts who obsess over foreign policy for a living.
But it’s not just the foreign policy of the old guard that analysts like Arm want to restore: Everything about Trumpism must be put out to pasture. Arm implies the future GOP should jettison the new voters Trump brought in, in favor of other demographics.
It’s unclear what voters Con Inc. expects to win over with neoconservatism, which lost decisively in 2008 and 2012 in the general election and 2016 in the Republican primary. There’s not a great demand for the return of Paul Ryan or Jeb Bush. The entire GOP has been Trumpified to a great degree as well. Every GOP presidential contender will need to pretend to be MAGA to have a shot in 2028.
Obsessing over fiscal policy, advocating for more foreign interventions, and being willing to capitulate on immigration is not a winning formula either in the GOP primaries or for a general electorate. But that’s what the old guard wants back. Con Inc. knows they can’t frame the dynamic as “MAGA vs. the old guard,” since Republicans love MAGA and the new GOP it has created. So they choose the fantastical framing of “twentysomething loser addicted to porn vs. normal people.” This makes it an easier choice for people, but it’s completely divorced from the reality of the conflict. The people pushing for a realignment are not all basement dwellers. Many of them are in the White House and could easily succeed Trump.
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These leaders don’t want to take the party back to the glory days of Karl Rove. They want to push the party in a new, nationalist direction. They want the GOP to address the problems of the 21st century, not resuscitate the platitudes of the Reagan era.
It’s crucial for whoever leads the party to keep the Trump coalition together. You have to please both the Core Republicans and the New Entrants. The party can’t win elections if one bloc flees for the other side. Never Trumper David French recognizes this, which is why he urges Democrats to read the study and work to win over the Core Republicans. French, unlike other Never Trumpers, has given up on the GOP entirely. He thinks it’s Trump’s party now and for the foreseeable future.
He’s obviously right. Only an America First candidate, not a Paul Ryan type, can hold the coalition together. And that’s the only way Republicans can win in a post-Trump world.
