Donald Trump's recent endorsement struggles (most notably in Georgia) in the weeks leading up to House Jan. 6 hearings have led to renewed speculation that the former president is losing his grip on the Republican Party. In fact, recent reporting suggests that several prominent Republicans are likely to run for president in 2024, whether or not Trump himself launches a third campaign. But let's put that in the proper context: Trump's oft-repeated Big Lie about the stolen 2020 election has been called the new "Lost Cause" (in literally hundreds of articles) but it's only one facet of a broader mindset that has moved to the center of GOP politics — and none of that is going away, regardless of what happens to Trump as a person or a political figure.
That mindset is rooted in Trump's claim that the system is specifically and maliciously rigged against his base — meaning white Christian conservatives, especially men, who are wholesome, innocent victims of malevolent outside forces, sinister elites and dangerous minorities. This echoes the Lost Cause reframing of the Civil War to cast white Southerners as the noble and innocent victims of similar malevolent forces. Freedom, not slavery, was the cause the South fought for, according to the Lost Cause story goes — "freedom" defined as "states' rights," but only for certain states and on certain issues, of course. Their soldiers, led by General Robert E. Lee, — were depicted as the greatest and most noble warriors of history. That's the heart of the big lie that Trump's big lie echoes, as attested by the Confederate flags carried into the Capitol during Trump's failed coup attempt, and echoed in his repeated defense of Confederate monuments that wildly misrepresent history.
