The Right Wing Populist movement as it stands now will not win. While I understand the sympathize with their distaste for the older Conservative movement and more Establishment Republicans they have a tendencies to paint with overbroad brushes that make it impossible for them to build alliances and actually effect real change.
Plus they seem to have a RIDICULOUS blind spot on the electability of Trump in a way that ignores on the ground reality, plus they tend to place to much emphasis on Trump and relitigating the 2020 election.
You see it constantly here, the populist right slanders the older Movement Conservatives by accusing them of "failing to conserve anything" or of "being the liberals of 20 years ago" and such. Yes, I know, you're already thinking "well, they're right", but that's the exact thing, they're wrong. They tend to focus and fixate on the areas where the Conservative movement LOST, not on the areas they won. This is in large part because the media tend to focus on those areas heavily, both to demoralize the right but also to not highlight the left's weakness.
You want examples? I'll give two big ones. The first is the homeschool and private school movement. People really need to understand that before the late 1970s and early 1980s the very IDEA of homeschooling was ILLEGAL across most of the country and that people would even WANT to do it or be allowed was a strange and weird THING. FURTHER, private schools were either for Rich People or Catholics. The idea of private schools for random non-Catholic middle class folks was ALIEN. School Choice wasn't even a thing.
Now? Homeschooling is legal across the entire country and school choice is a strong enough movement that it's slowly chipping away as the public school monopoly on state funding. In the 1960s and 70s the very idea would have been laughable. No, not enough people on the right take advantage of these things, but the simple fact they CAN and it is a thing they can DO represents a MASSIVE setback to the Progressive indoctrination program of children and if you go look in the right places you will see Progressives CONSTANTLY bemoaning that Homeschooling and Private Schooling are THINGS... and there's next to nothing they have been able to do to turn the tide on back on these topics.
Another major victory is of course on Gun Rights. As recent at the 1980s the "collective interpretation" of the 2nd Amendment was taught as LEGAL FACT. Heck, that was the main interpretation textbooks were going with even the YEAR HELLER WAS DECIDED (I know, I literally took a Constitutional Law class going over Constitutional Rights and Interpretation that year and the teacher wisely decided to wait on discussing the 2nd Amendment until the Heller decision came forth... to say Heller and the textbook were... in tension with each other would be an understatement). But bear in mind that's been more than a legal thing, that's also been a cultural thing. For all we bemoan how routine gun control demands are, how they keep trying to regulate around the 2nd Amendment something most people don't understand is since the 1990s there has been no successful attempt at a new Gun Control law... even when the Dems were in majority and held the Presidency. The issue has become that toxic and that one sided that the question these days isn't "will we keep AR-15s" it's become "can we roll back gun control from pre-1990s". I seriously don't think people understand how powerful the gun control lobby was in the 1990s and earlier and one of the reasons the left is so bitter about this was that they VERY NEARLY WON on this issue... they THOUGHT THEY HAD IT and then... everything started rolling back.
And who won that? It wasn't the modern populist right, no, it was the old Conservative movement allying with the various gun rights groups working together towards a common goal.
Heck, people also don't understand how far the Conservative movement has come when it comes to the COURTS either. The Right managed to break the progressive grip on the courts in the 1980s and since that times it's been a slow and systemic march BACK through them, but for most populist rightists the Courts have always been slightly dominated by the Republicans, as most Millennials don't remember a time when the Chief Justice wasn't a Republican appointee. What they don't get is that again, that was a MASSIVE fight and it was super establishment and very neo-conny HW Bush who appointed CLARENCE THOMAS to the Supreme Court. Stop and REALLY THINK about that for a movement. Thomas is the ideological leader of the Conservative wing of the Court, he's a firebrand Originalist and Conservative... but does the Establishment get credit for putting him there? No... because he's been there so long most Populist take his appointment for GRANTED.
Until the Populist Right learns to give credit where it is due and is willing to actually work WITH the older groups and not constantly paint with a broad brush they will have a lot of trouble building coalitions on the right that will be able to actually win and govern.
Likewise they need to take a long, LONG look at Trump and understand that he has MAJOR electoral issues. Yes, he had the election stolen from him and what happened was AT MINIMUM sleezy as fuck and at worst actively criminal. But here's the thing, he's ALSO highly toxic to many moderates, he actively turns people off from working with him, and he's been effectively demonized by the media to the extent no other candidate has. And this isn't just the standard media demonization either, Trump is a person whom people have STRONG reactions to REGARDLESS, often those reactions are negative. And while he is very popular with those whom like him, when you look at an electoral college map, those who like him are not in the right places TO WIN.
And that's a major issue. Yes, Trump should be president right now, yes it's unfair to him, but draw me a map that he can plausibly win in 2024. You seriously think he can flip all the states he needs to from 2020? I don't see it, not with the way subsequent elections have gone. And so long as the Populist Right build their brand and identity around Trump, as long as he defines them, they have no chance of actually winning and governing successfully.
Yes, the beaucratic state needs to be brought to heel. I'm personally in favor of firing everyone above a GS-10 in the government and basically burning it all down and prohibiting anyone currently serving in the government who has not actively become a whistleblower from continuing to serve in the government. But tell me, how many in the Populist movement even know what GS-10 EVEN MEANS?
Again, they lack the basic knowledge to govern... they lack the ability to make alliances because they constantly demean and degrade those who have been fighting for the same things they have. They ignore the hard fights those coming before them have won while focusing exclusively on the fights they've lost, all while not actually offering real strategies to win those lost fights that were lost just going "you should have done more/better/harder!" or offering solutions that would literally require a fucking time machine.
