Analyst warns Trump created a 'very new' expectation for GOP — and it could outlast him
President Donald Trump has created a new requirement for people to become members of the Republican Party, and those expectations appear to have some staying power, according to one analyst.
Marc Elias, lawyer and founder of Democracy Docket, said in a YouTube video on Sunday that Trump and his MAGA party now require Republican Party members to be against voting rights. That includes a broad range of views, such as opposing the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits states from racially gerrymandering their election maps, to supporting the repeal of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.
The requirement to be anti-voting rights is also a far cry from the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, Elias added.
"In the Republican Party, the political party: the caucuses, the House and the Senate, their voters, and certainly Donald Trump, have created an expectation that if you are a conservative justice or someone who views themselves as being part of the right wing, then you are expected to be anti-voting rights," Elias said.
"This is a very new expectation for the Republican Party," Elias added.
Elias made the comments at a time when the Supreme Court is considering a case brought by Louisiana, which some analysts think the court could use to finish gutting the Voting Rights Act.
"The party of Reagan and Bush, which were very conservative and not very friendly to voting rights, by the way, has now been replaced by the party of Donald Trump," Elias said. "That's why, to me, I look at it as how the Republican party went from that to the party that demands Barack Obama's birth certificate and then elects Trump."