The new third party …

It doesn’t have an official name yet, but there’s new third party in power. 

And Donald Trump is its first elected President. For better or worse. 

He was elected as a Republican by defeating his Democrat opponent.  But he’s not really a traditional Republican.  In fact, to win the party’s nomination he defeated all the traditional Republicans – usually by a wide margin – in the primaries. Most of them held to standard Republican “principles” while he didn’t and in many instances mocked those principles. 

Many times he sounded more like a Democrat, which he had been in years past, than what people expected from an establishment Republican.  Still, he swept most of the Republican primaries and got the nomination.

The Republican establishment was aghast. 

He blew off almost all of their litmus tests.  What did he stand for? Was he opposed to same-sex marriage? It didn’t seem so.  What about reforming entitlements? Nope, he didn’t seem to want to touch entitlements. What about banning abortions? He claimed to be pro-life, but seemed opposed to any Federal law that banned abortions under any circumstances. Free trade?  Nope, he promised harsh penalties on U.S. companies that sent their manufacturing jobs to other countries, plus tariffs on goods from countries he felt were engaging in unfair trade practices. Cutting government spending? Well, he proposed spending a trillion dollars on fixing infrastructure. 

And then there was Russia. He actually wanted closer ties with Russia – maybe even as a partner – to defeat ISIS and other radical Islamist groups around the world.  He saw China as much more of a threat – economically and militarily – than Russia.      

If the Republican establishment was freaking out, the Democrat establishment was even more perplexed.  Trump’s approach to entitlement reform, trade, and government spending on infrastructure was eerily similar to what many grassroots Democrats wanted.

A lot of what Trump said made sense to an American public exhausted by political posturing from both the traditional Republicans and Democrats on social mores and social injustice, with neither side ever getting around to solving the real problems.

Trump’s platform was amazingly simple.  Getting rid of the special interests. Fixing and simplifying the tax code.  Stopping illegal immigration.  Saving American manufacturing jobs. Making government more accountable to the people.   

Trump focused on the important stuff – like jobs, income, safety, and a government increasingly out of touch with its citizens – rather than social issues and political correctness. In doing so, he ran against the Republican establishment as much as against the Democrat establishment. 

Traditional Republican leaders despised him. Past Republican Presidents refused to support him. McCain and Romney – both former Republican Presidential candidates – publicly implored other Republicans to vote against him.  Many of his primary opponents, who had all publicly pledged to support the ultimate Republican candidate, reneged on their pledge.  One of these, John Kasich, Governor of Ohio, even refused to attend the Republican Convention in his own state. 

Trump’s Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, raised and spent nearly a billion dollars to defeat him.  Trump, on the other hand, spent a mere fraction of that.

The media was firmly in Hillary’s camp, as were Hollywood celebrities, rock stars, sports stars, Bill Clinton, and also Barack and Michelle Obama.

Trump had Bobby Knight and Scott Baio as his celebrity supporters.  If you don’t know those names right off the bat, you get my point.

In the end, Trump won, despite Republican opposition, despite Democrat, media and celebrity opposition, despite overwhelming odds against him everywhere.

So is he really a Republican President-elect?  I don’t think so. 

He’s not surrounded himself with classic Republican establishment types in his cabinet selections.  Instead, he’s nominated people who’ve been wildly successful in business and the military, and more than a few folks who would gladly and somewhat proudly admit to being well outside the political mainstream.

Republicans in the House and Senate – who increased or maintained majorities from his coattails – still aren’t sure what to do about him. He’s not one of them. When Republicans tried in the dead of night to get rid of an irksome ethics board, Trump called them out and browbeat them into pulling back.  When Republicans wanted to repeal ObamaCare immediately without a replacement plan in hand, Trump again called them out and made them reconsider. 

And he hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet.   

In my mind, what we are seeing is the emergence of a third party – unnamed as of yet – but with different priorities and a different agenda than either the Republican or Democrat parties. There are fights to come over the tax code – which Trump wants to simplify, and also to eliminate a great number of special tax provisions so loved by big campaign donors to both parties – and on a variety of other fronts. There are inevitable fights to come on healthcare, and whether the government can use its buying power to force down prescription prices, again targeting another group of big campaign donors to both parties. There will be many more.   

So opposition will come not just from Democrats, but also Republicans. 

I don’t think he’s afraid of either.  Nor of the media. I think he’s really charting an entirely different course. Whether he can pull it off is still an open question. But if he can deliver on many of his promises he’ll be the first of many to come who will overturn our existing two-party system. 

Which is probably long overdue.