Discursive Dominance by Tweet: How the GOP Became the Party of Trump

• In Event: Elites, Media, and Public Opinion

Abstract

A defining feature of Donald Trump’s presidency was the willingness of his Republican colleagues to play along with his illiberal and erratic behavior. This tendency to “follow the leader” extended from endorsing particular policy positions to parroting the false claims of election fraud that led to the siege of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The transition of the GOP into the party of Trump has threatened the pluralism and liberalism often thought to define American democracy. Yet, this change did not occur overnight; instead, Trump’s dominance increased over time as his particular discursive style became mainstream within the party. To examine how Trump transformed the Republican Party in his own image, this study utilizes a dataset of more than three million tweets issued by Republican members of Congress throughout Trump’s term (2017–21). Computer-assisted text analysis and natural language processing techniques are employed to investigate how the party’s discourse coalesced around Trump. Additional statistical analyses examine the individual-level factors that predict which particular Republicans embraced Trumpian discourse and whether doing so led to greater engagement (e.g., retweets, favorites, etc.). This study increases our understanding of elites’ political communication strategies on social media by tracing how a single leader’s rhetorical style spreads through a network of copartisans. Furthermore, this research contributes to the ongoing scholarly discussion on the legacy of the Trump presidency for American democracy and the Republican Party.

Author

• Joseph Cerrone, George Washington University