Trump still owns the Republican Party, but Elise Stefanik waits in the wings

The Republican congresswoman’s sparring with the heads of Ivy League universities has gone viral, establishing her ability to rouse moderates
She is an obvious contender for the White House whenever she decides it’s time to run

Robert Delaney

Published: 7:30pm, 11 Dec 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

The future of the US Republican Party isn’t Donald Trump, Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis. It’s Elise Stefanik, who put her abilities on full display at a congressional hearing last week.

With her final line of questioning on genocide, a subject that US politicians of all stripes invoke in their allegations against Beijing, the New York representative pulled off a spectacle with more substance than the usual performative garbage masquerading as debate.

Her exchanges with the University of Pennsylvania’s then president Elizabeth Magill, MIT president Sally Kornbluth and Harvard University president Claudine Gay – who were inexplicably incapable of saying that calls for genocide against Jews are against their schools’ codes of conduct – have dominated the headlines and social media since.

They provided rocket fuel for the Republican Party’s charge against “woke” elitism in American academia, the same territory that many in the party target for exchanges with China. Magill resigned. The hearing was parodied on Saturday Night Live. Investigations will ensue.

In the tragic politics of the Middle East, where dislocation, dispossession and violent hatred make choosing sides treacherous, Stefanik’s question should have been easy to answer.

02:40

Gaza residents gather around a massive crater ahead of pause in war with Israel

The rules of engagement in academic discourse are complex, but there was an obvious rhetorical path: calls for genocide have no place in civilised culture, including academia, and such speech differs fundamentally from denunciations of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, which should be acceptable within discourse about the Middle East.

Unfortunately for the university heads, wordy clarifications won’t counteract the short, social-media-ready clips of Stefanik’s exchange with them.

Their inability to deliver a simple answer shows how twisted some on the left have become and illustrates that within the cesspool of conspiracy theories, bigotry and misogyny that animates the far-right, there are some legitimate grievances.

A masterstroke of political strategy, Stefanik’s steamrollering of the Ivy League school presidents will work in her favour, most of all because the appeal of her position reaches beyond those of Republicans still insisting, without a shred of credible evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen. It also separates Stefanik from the world of Trump followers who believe that Jewish space lasers are responsible for wildfires or that Democrats are paedophiles in disguise.

Many wondered why, given her ability to trounce her opponents in recent elections, Stefanik didn’t vie for the House speakership that eventually went to Mike Johnson after the Republicans tossed Kevin McCarthy out of power.

Elise Stefanik hugs Mike Johnson after nominating him to be the new House speaker at the Capitol in Washington, on October 25. Photo: AP

She apparently knows that the House speakership, a position nearly on par with the Oval Office, has become a patch of quicksand. Now that Stefanik has established her ability to rouse moderates, and perhaps many liberals who stand with Israel against Hamas’ butchery, she is an obvious contender for the White House whenever she decides it’s time to run.

Trump still owns the Republican Party, as the most recent Wall Street Journal poll shows. Politico pointed out in recent analysis that attacks on him from every primary opponent except Chris Christie have declined.

That means he has the power to devastate DeSantis and Haley in the months before next year’s election in a battle that will force Haley – who had been gaining some ground in the polls – to lean into all of the conspiracy theory bunk that Trump throws at his base.

‘Nothing more to say’: Trump cancels plan to testify in NY fraud trial

Meanwhile, Stefanik, who migrated to the right flank of the Republican Party from the centre and embraced election denialism once she realised this was a winning position, watches from her perch, looking for the next opportunity to eviscerate symbols of the left.

For anyone concerned about the signals Trump has been sending with regard to how much autocracy and vengeance he intends to bring to the White House, assuming he wins next year, there’s a looming question about Stefanik: does she not understand how election denialism and autocracy led to the 20th century’s most notorious genocide, perpetrated against Jews under Adolph Hitler?

Her deft political instincts would suggest the answer is no. She was among many to pull her party from its traditionally conservative moorings and create a political force that supports the nationalistic ideologies of strongmen like Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

On the subject of China, we should expect Stefanik to adopt the same strategy of the many Republicans who charge hard against Beijing to provide cover for their own party’s drift into autocracy.

Given her success last week, we’re likely to see academic administrators who oversee exchanges with China hauled before her.

Robert Delaney is the Post’s North America bureau chief