Trump-lite is flavour of the month.

Can Trump-lite lead the Republican Party to a big win in the US 2022 midterms?

Axios said it the days of the Virginia gubernatorial election. The Atlantic said it the day after. A lighter form of Trumpism, both said, was working very well for the Republican Party.

Trump-lite is a winning strategy. Virginia has gone red. New Jersey has barely managed to stay blue.

Trump-lite, or at least the Glenn Youngkin formulation of the drug, has a pretty distinct flavour.

Axios spoke to Republican strategists and summed up its unique taste in five easy takes:

• Embrace Trump tactics: In terms of sustained and merciless needling of the opponent for their least well-judged words.
• Softly embrace Trump himself: Don’t talk about the big man. Don’t talk against him.
• Say it’s not you but the opponent who is close-minded: The culture wars provide fodder, what with mask requirements, transgender bathrooms and teaching on race.
• Paint the opponent as too powerful: The Democrats have control of Washington. That can seem like a bad thing if they’re shown as too far left.
• Don’t say crazy things: If independents and suburban women find your words or sentiments incendiary or insulting, that’s bad.

Trump-lite works as a template… so far. It remains to be seen what will happen in swing states in the 2022 midterms.

Going Further:

• Glenn Youngkin, political novice rewrites the Republican playbook | FT

Sources

• Text: This piece was originally published in Medium and re-published in PMP Magazine on 6 November 2021, with the author’s consent. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
• Cover: Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)