Who will lead the Republican Party after Donald Trump? It’s a question that the right’s most ambitious figures are already trying to answer, if not so publicly just yet. Administration heavies JD Vance and Marco Rubio are expected to run for president in 2028, for instance — but two prominent MAGA women are providing a totally different archetype for the next GOP leader.
Erika Kirk and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Constance Grady writes, are presenting Republicans with “an inverse to everything Trump embodies: principled where Trump is vindictive, peaceful where he is violent, religiously motivated where he is plainly secular.” Grady explains how Kirk and Greene, in their recent media tours, are trying to embody an ideal of Christian womanhood that focuses on forgiveness and godliness, a persona that can appeal to young Christian women “without necessarily threatening the power of the men at the center.” As the post-Trump era takes shape, Republicans must decide if the MAGA movement can survive as an ethos that means something beyond support for Trump alone. Kirk and Greene, in their ways, are trying to provide one model for how it might.
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—Seth Maxon, politics, policy, and ideas editor
