Writer and political commentator Rian Malan and I have had daily email arguments about politics for many years, particularly US politics. We disagree on much, but not everything. The debates have gotten hotter since Trump 2.0, when a new word crept into his missives: It is the “uniparty”.
The term is not new (it was extensively used by the Green Party in 2000), but it has popped up again recently among Republicans like RFK Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene. It is used as a dismissive insult, implying that there is no difference between the Democrats and the “traditional” GOP (it is used similarly in the UK to lump together the Labour/Tory hegemony). The uniparty refers to a political system in which the ping-ponging between two parties at various elections is all noise and no substance − save for minor cultural and trade policy edits, both are essentially the same creaking, ossified, ageing beasts of political incompetence and corruption.
At the core of one of our exchanges was the question of who is responsible for some of the waste and (perhaps) corruption that has been or will be found as DOGE crawls through the administrative state, cutting and slashing spending as they see fit. The Democrats have been loudly blamed by Trump and MAGA, but in fact, every single cent spent by the US government has been approved by both parties in successive administrations. In fact, the GOP has held power for about 60% of the past 30 years, so it could be argued that more blame falls at their feet.
The new “uniparty” narrative neatly sidesteps this debate. They are all responsible, the architects of the new GOP say. We are building a new Republican Party − unrecognizable even to its most recent ancestors.
It is not hard to see what the new GOP envisions for itself. It will completely dismantle what it euphemistically describes as the “administrative state” − a wonky term referring to the surfeit of regulation and bureaucracy-choked governance. They are doing this by diktat: excise the perceived bottlenecks, lance the boils, and leave the ensuing fight to the courts. They have already won some cases and will likely win more.
The intellectual fuel behind this new disruption is that the presidency has been too long hobbled by regulators and their agencies − unelected and (in some cases) unaccountable. What they are doing is striking at the heart of the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. In their interpretation, Congress (and their regulatory delegees) and the judiciary have too much power, while the executive has too little, and that is not what the founders intended. The new GOP is banking on the Supreme Court agreeing. And indeed, they have already had some notable successes thanks to their conservative appointments (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett).
A gamble
Banking on SCOTUS support is indeed a gamble. Not all judges march in partisan lockstep on all issues. It is likely that only one vote will swing this administration’s attempts to wholly reinterpret the separation of powers. That is, for any jurist, an unimaginably heavy burden. Excuse the obvious pun, but the jury is out on whether Trump will get the support he seeks there.
We return to our point: the current administration’s rubbishing of the old GOP/Dem uniparty and the rolling out of an entirely unprecedented way of governing the Republic, with the president in command of a vast set of new powers and prerogatives. Assume they prevail at the courts − will they be successful and see a new dawn of American exceptionalism? Or will it collapse amidst lost industries, lost jobs, lost competitiveness, a hollowed-out civil service, and an embittered and angry electorate? Or will it just muddle along, without much change anywhere?
I offer a prediction here, a fool’s game, I know. The latter option (muddling along) is not a realistic scenario. Aggressive new tariffs and their certain retaliations, alienation of global allies, and shock-tactic dismantling (or at least brutal pruning) of sprawling agencies like FEMA, Education, Health, IRS, Social Security, and others are unlikely to leave the average citizen unaffected. Every family in America will be touched in some way by the strategy of “flood the zone with shit” (in Steve Bannon’s memorable phrase). Prices will inflate because of retaliatory tariffs, hundreds of thousands of government jobs are being shed, services like SSA will suffer and other small cuts will start to sting the average voter. Soon.
Which would ordinarily leave two possibilities − catastrophic failure or astonishing success.
I submit it will be neither.
Here is why. Tearing down a house takes far less time than building a new one, especially if plans are not exhaustively detailed and managed. It should be clear by now that they are not. Programs are being cancelled and then uncancelled. Officials and government technocrats are fired and then quickly rehired upon realisation of impact. Tariffs are raised and dropped. Nobody seems to have done the hard work of building proper blueprints for the future (Project 2025 is more of a manifesto than a project plan). Within this administration, there may well be passionate, well-intentioned nation-building aspirations, but we all know about those roads duly littered.
Furthermore, this administration did not get a “landslide” mandate to make changes of this magnitude (no matter what you read on Truth Social). They won the presidency via the electoral college by only 44,000 votes in three swing states, meaning that just a small ripple of dissatisfaction among disappointed voters will bring the Democrats control of Congress in 2026 and a Democratic president in 2028.
The grand sweep
This administration has four years to differentiate itself from the previous administration. In the grand sweep of political machinations, that is a blink of an eye. But the dismantling and rebuilding of the entire architecture of governance is not only likely to take far longer but will upset many, many apple carts along the way.
Some of the apple carts are owned by people who voted for Trump − more voters than his margin of victory. They are not going to be happy. They will pine for the days of the uniparty and will act accordingly at the next voting booth.
Trump will not have the time to build an aspiration as large and complex as this.
[Image: reve.ai]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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