President Donald Trump’s recent comments about renaming the Republican Party after him raises the question of whether this might be the spark that ignites a serious reconsideration of just what the Republican Party stands for and what the future holds for the party. Some will write off Trump’s ruminations about changing the name to “ Tpublican” or some other bastardized version as another of his egomaniacal rants to distract the media from learning about playboy Trump’s earlier years with Jeffrey Epstein.

Yet, few believed Trump would tear down the entire East Wing of the White House to create a Mar-a-Lago North. This is the American president who has plastered the Oval Office with gold, now converted to the Trump family cash register with real estate deals and crypto scams ringing up sales for the billionaire family. Most Americans would not expect a sitting president to approve a new dollar coin with his portrait on it, but it is in the planning stages. There seems no end to Trump disgracing the office of the presidency with his monumental ego and tacky taste.

With the latest Gallup poll showing Trump and his party in trouble, with only 36% of Americans approving of his job performance, fair-weather Republicans and independents who voted for Trump in 2024 because he wasn’t Kamala Harris may reconsider their vote for Republicans in the future. There are already signs of dissent at the polls with the recent elections of Democratic governors in New Jersey and Virginia.

The stakes are high for the Grand Old Party. Republicans are also in danger of losing control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections with the economy worsening daily while Trump becomes the first president refusing to release basic economic data on job losses and inflation. There are already signs from the Senate Republican majority that Trump’s behavior can no longer be ignored. In response to Trump’s efforts to convince Senate Republicans to kill the filibuster, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune stiffed Trump and said there weren’t enough Senate Republicans willing to make it happen.

In another message to Trump that times are changing, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, chair of the Armed Services Committee, joined with his Democratic counterpart to investigate allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered there to be no survivors in U.S. strikes on boats off South America. The House Committee followed suit assuring bipartisan oversight in both chambers.

Trump’s feckless leadership of the Republican Party is reminiscent of Rip Van Winkle’s experience. Rip woke up after a long 20-year sleep to find the world changed around him. Similarly, the Republican Party has awakened from the day Ronald Reagan admonished Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall to Trump’s mismanaged and dangerous foreign policy. He is outfoxed by Chinese President Xi Jinping on tariffs at the expense of American farmers, and the war criminal Vladimir Putin plays Trump for a fool who yields in deference to the Russian president and his murderous assault on Ukraine.

Once the law-and-order party, Republicans are now led by a president who just pardoned a Honduran ex-president serving a 45-year term for receiving millions in bribes and partnering with narcotics traffickers. Trump also commuted the sentence of a private equity executive who just began a seven-year sentence for a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of investors. But Trump had no problem calling for the execution of U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a war hero, who reminded our military forces they did not have to follow orders that broke the law.

Those who recently spoke at former Vice President Dick Cheney’s funeral service offered a considerable contrast to Trump’s brand of leadership. There is no doubt that Cheney leaves behind a career of disastrous foreign policy blunders, but he will also be remembered for endorsing Harris as the only alternative to Trump in 2024. His daughter, former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, read a letter Cheney wrote to his grandchildren, stating that “bonds of party must always yield to the single bond we share as Americans.”

To justify what had to be his most difficult political decision, he said, “There has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” In the end, Cheney got it right, leaving his beloved Republican Party for his one vote against Trump in 2024.

Republicans in Congress may be waking up to the fact that the man Cheney called a threat to our republic will not be around forever. With an increasingly self-absorbed and unhinged president losing ground with some Republicans in Congress, it hardly seems the moment to attach any semblance of the Trump surname to their party. Now is the time to rebuild the Republican Party with Trump as a mere footnote of times gone bad.

____

Bob Kustra served two terms as Republican lieutenant governor of Illinois and 10 years as a state legislator. He is now host of “Readers Corner” on Boise State Public Radio and a regular columnist for the Idaho Statesman.

___

©2025 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.