Opinion - Will MAGA outlive Trump? Don’t bet on it.

Garry South, opinion contributor Mon, July 27, 2026 at 12:55 PM UTC

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A lot of brain power has been spent engaging in speculation about who might inherit the so-called MAGA base when Trump finally exits stage right in 2028. Bringing history into the equation, the short answer may be no one.Although admittedly not an exact parallel, it might be useful to look at the precedent of George Corley Wallace. Wallace, of course, was the longest-serving governor of Alabama, and a demagogic politician who framed his own place in history by uttering the infamous declaration: “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Though not as large in scale as the Trump base (it obviously never elected him president), Wallace nevertheless began assembling a potent national political constituency, consisting mainly of white working-class voters and conservatives alienated by the Civil Rights Movement, while running unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president in 1964.

But his base really crystallized when he ran for president as the third-party candidate of the American Independent Party in the 1968 election. He and his running mate, retired Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, won nearly 10 million votes, or 13.5 percent of the popular vote, five Southern states and 46 electoral votes — the last time a third-party or independent candidate won a state or garnered any electoral votes.

Based on that showing, Wallace looked to be in a strong position to also be a competitive force in the 1972 presidential race, in which he was again competing for the Democratic nomination, when his campaign was cut short by five bullets fired by an intended assassin in Laurel, Maryland. The attempt left Wallace permanently paralyzed below the waist, and wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life.

But as a signal of what might have been, and how strong his coalition had become, in March of that year, Wallace overwhelmingly won the Florida Democratic primary with 42 percent of the vote, followed by convincing wins in Tennessee, North Carolina and his home state of Alabama. Then he actually went on to win the Democratic primaries in the Northern states of Maryland and Michigan, even while in the hospital room recovering from the assassination attempt.

So, what happened to the Wallace base after he was taken out of action? Turns out it was not a political inheritance that could be passed on to or claimed by a would-be successor.

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In the remainder of the 1972 campaign, the American Independent Party — Wallace’s vehicle for his successes in the 1968 campaign — nominated right-wing Republican California Rep. John Schmitz, a John Birch Society member, for president. He proceeded to fail miserably, garnering a measly 1.42 percent of the popular vote, not coming close to winning a single state or electoral vote. The Wallace constituency was his, and his alone.  I believe this precedent is useful because it demonstrates that the constituencies built by out-of-the-box candidates like Wallace and Trump are unique to them, and don’t hold together after the charismatic principal is gone from the scene.We saw a preview of this in the case of Trump’s base in the 2024 Republican primaries, in which a large number of Republican candidates competed for the nomination, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy, among others.

They were all attempting to outdo one another as the new Trump, or Trump lite, or Trumpian without the liabilities. It didn’t work. In the end, even though he had been defeated as president in 2020, the MAGA base overwhelmingly preferred the real thing to a pretender, and Trump easily dispatched all his opponents, easily winning re-nomination.

In 2028, of course, Trump cannot run again, so the Republican nomination is up for grabs, and there will be a Republican nominee.

But for any would-be Republican candidate, no matter how close they have been to Trump — his vice president or secretary of state, for instance — to think they will just automatically become heir to the MAGA base, and hold it together in the general election, would be making a huge mistake. But be my guest.

Garry South is a veteran California-based Democratic political strategist who has played prominent roles in three presidential campaigns.

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