While Youngkin’s defeat of Democratic candidate and former governor Terry McAuliffe is a blow to Democrats, the result may not be the vindication of former President Donald Trump that some Republicans have claimed.
Trump thanked his own supporters following Youngkin’s win, saying in a statement to his base: “Without you, he would not have been close to winning. The MAGA movement is bigger and stronger than ever before.”
Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, expressed a similar sentiment in a tweet on Tuesday.
“Terry McAuliffe and Democrats tried to run against Trump in Virginia but their strategy backfired,” McDaniel wrote.
“@GlennYoungkin will receive more votes than any Virginia governor in history. President Trump continues to be a huge boost for Republicans across the country,” she said.
Democrats worked to link Youngkin to Trump during the gubernatorial campaign and President Joe Biden mocked the Republicans for apparently not wanting Trump to campaign in person.
McDaniel’s tweet was met with criticism from social media users who believed she had interpreted the result in the wrong way. Pollster and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver wrote: “Entirely plausible scenario is that GOP has a bunch of good outcomes in 2021/2022 without Trump but then nominates Trump anyway and has a bad 2024.”
Experts who spoke to Newsweek suggested that while Trump was still a major figure in the Republican Party, Virginia could point the way to the next phase for the GOP.
Trumpism Without Trump
David A. Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University, told Newsweek that Republicans may not be moving away from Trump-style politics, but they could be moving away from the man himself.
“Virginia, I think, shows how Republicans can fully integrate a Trumpist agenda and its accompanying themes without running a buffoon who outrages the sensibilities of affluent professionals or being a second fiddle to the former president,” Bateman said.
“We had already seen iterations of this in Florida and Texas, where the buffoonery is present but more muted, or at least better tailored to the specific state audience,” he said.
Bateman said Glenn Youngkin “is very much of the same stripe”
“Rather than showing that the party doesn’t need Trump, the victory shows just how much the party has integrated many of the key themes that Trump brought to the forefront - although these were already very much present in GOP politics for a long time.”
No Repudiation
Keeping Trump at a distance is not the same as breaking with the former president, however.
Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London’s Center on U.S. Politics, told Newsweek that Trump’s power will remain undiminished for now.
“Youngkin’s victory shows that Republican candidates can be successful without going ‘all-in’ for Trump,” Gift said.
“But that’s a separate issue from whether they can win by actually repudiating the former president,” he said.
“To my mind, nothing about the Virginia results suggests that Trump’s power is waning among his base,” Gift went on. “And since many GOP politicians have to worry about winning their own primaries before they can think about general elections, most will continue to be pulled into the gravitational orbit of Trump.”
Youngkin’s Example
Paul Quirk, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, told Newsweek the results in Virginia could indicate how the Republican Party will move on from the former president.
He emphasized the fact that Virginia is not a red state and that the governor’s race was competitive. President Biden won Virginia by a 10-point margin in 2020 and the state has long voted for Democratic presidential candidates.
“It makes sense that this occurred mainly in the later stages of a campaign in a competitive state,” Quirk said.
“Youngkin could see that fully embracing Trump would kill his chances, so he in effect gave Trump a take-it-or-leave-it proposition: ‘I won’t appear with you or promote your attempt to overturn the 2020 election. But I’ll be generally friendly toward you. You’ll have to settle for that and won’t turn your base against me,’” he went on.
Quirk said Trump had apparently realized he could neither offer Youngkin anything nor threaten him. However, the situation would be different in red states.
“Republicans in solid-red states and districts won’t follow Youngkin’s example,” Quirk told Newsweek.
“All-in Trumpism is still their ticket to electoral success. But if Republicans in swing states and districts imitate Youngkin’s approach, Trump will have no way to stop them, and a post-Trump Republican Party will begin to emerge,” he said.
Though both Democrats and Republicans have to an extent framed the Virginia race as a referendum on Trump, the reality may be that Youngkin’s win shows that the GOP has successfully integrated Trump’s politics into its brand and could be ready to leave the man responsible behind.
