The relationship between Trump and the Republican Party is still evolving

Kellyanne Conway was straightforward and stuck to the facts in her appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday morning. Her comments about how she views feminism are making most of the headlines, but I was struck by what she said about the Trump campaign and how the Trump movement as a whole has sparked a change within the Republican Party.

She got to the heart of why Donald Trump was so successful in 2016. Nothing is more true than when she said that Trump “earned the nomination in a way that was bottom up, instead of top down.”  Conway says that conservatism needed a “new fusion of energy” and “candidate Trump and President-elect and Nominee Trump, he went right to the grass roots … He made people feel from the beginning they were part of this movement.” Trump, she said, “replaced this fiction of electability with this revelation of electricity and brought people in.”

Conway hit the nail on the head. Trump has dismantled a lot of the preconceived notions about how campaigns should be run and what is disqualifying. He has brought a new energy and style to the Republican Party, and while it’s uncertain what the party will look like, it’s certain that change is happening. It remains to be seen whether that energy is something manageable like the “electricity” Conway talked about or more like dangerous nitroglycerin.

The Trump phenomenon and what it means for the future of the Republican Party or the conservative cause was not settled on Nov. 8. How Trump governs over the next 18 months and what happens in the mid-term elections will only begin to answer some of the questions about the future of the party. And while we are telling it like it is, Karl Rove’s piece in the Wall Street Journal Thursday, “When the president speaks, who’ll listen?” addresses some of the questions about how Trump will work with Congress and what that will mean for voters who are looking for effective results on everything from building the wall to immigration reform to repealing Obamacare. It seems like every week there is a new threshold event or a pivot point for the Trump administration and Rove does a good job of laying out what is so important about Trump’s first speech to Congress. Rove writes that Trump should focus on appealing to Republicans in Congress “who alternate between hope and dread regarding the new administration.” At the same time, Trump can’t forget about all the people who, as Conway put it, “really felt engaged” during the campaign because they “felt like they had a seat at the table.”

The Republican universe is still unstable. The Republican Party/Trump relationship is still evolving, but as Reince Priebus said during his appearance with Stephen K. Bannon at CPAC, Republicans do need to stick together. It is a fact that Trump has the party and the party has Trump — and the party is just getting started.