What I got wrong about Trump and the culture war

The culture war hasn't ended under Trump. It has swallowed up everything else.

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images, saicle/iStock)

Pundits get things wrong. I certainly do. In February 2014, 16 months before Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign, I declared Jeb Bush the likely GOP nominee for 2016. In the weeks leading up to the November vote that year, I repeatedly predicted a Hillary Clinton victory.

On the positive side of the ledger, I was bullish on Trump's prospects for winning the Republican nomination long before most mainstream pundits were willing to entertain the possibility. But even in the context of Trump's successful bid to become the GOP standard-bearer, I badly misinterpreted something that's turned out to be extraordinarily important: I assumed that Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican Party signaled the advent of a post-religious right. The culture war was over, the left had won, and the GOP had now moved onto other things — like attacking immigrants, embracing protectionism, and cultivating ethnic nationalism.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.