Obama’s legacy: ‘Trump’ing the Republicans

A mere tech­ni­cal­i­ty now rests between Don­ald Trump and the Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. With Texas sen­a­tor Ted Cruz and Ohio gov­er­nor John Kashich drop­ping out of the race, it is set to be a Hillary vs Trump bat­tle till the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Novem­ber.

But what exact­ly drove Repub­li­can vot­ers to choose a brash real­i­ty TV star, a divi­sive leader with inflam­ma­to­ry views on minori­ties, women and the wel­fare state? How did the par­ty of Con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, once head­ed by Abra­ham Lin­coln and Ronald Rea­gan, 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. 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, have become 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, has ral­lied demo­c­ra­t­ic 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. In an emo­tion­al speech, remem­ber­ing the vic­tims of the many hor­ri­ble mas­sacres dur­ing his tenure, he called to an end to the excus­es for inac­tion. In Octo­ber 2015, Oba­ma chose diplo­ma­cy over mil­i­tary action to bring Iran to the nego­ti­at­ing table, and achieved the his­toric nuclear deal.

Oba­ma ener­gized his push for afford­able health­care against an adamant Repub­li­can Par­ty, allow­ing ‘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 green 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 signed exec­u­tive orders to over­haul the immi­gra­tion sys­tem, giv­ing 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.

In 2012, at the begin­ning of his sec­ond term, Oba­ma became the first sit­ting Pres­i­dent to sup­port same-sex mar­riage, repeal­ing 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 the pol­i­cy 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. As he pushed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s image into a state of flux he suf­fered polit­i­cal­ly, name­ly in the 2014 midterm elec­tions, where 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 pan-Amer­i­ca 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 reign in the 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 to pose an ide­o­log­i­cal counter. How­ev­er, to the dis­may of Repub­li­can lead­ers, Don­ald Trump has anchored the par­ty’s iden­ti­ty in the extreme right of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. His impetu­ous, hate­ful, war-drum, apoc­a­lypse-now nar­ra­tive has reduced the par­ty to the col­lec­tive of the irra­tional.

But Repub­li­cans also need to 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, and that can leave the GOP’s cred­i­bil­i­ty crip­pled for years to come.

Trump’s rise has become a joke around the globe, with no world leader even mulling the prospect of deal­ing with the real­i­ty TV star as com­man­der-in-chief of the Unit­ed States. It is the con­se­quence of the Repub­li­cans 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 laid the seeds for Repub­li­cans to birth their Franken­stein. Now, the Democ­rats applaud and the GOP laments as the mon­ster runs amok and tears down his cre­ators.