Joe Lowndes writes:

The first time I came across TPUSA was at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where I met a pair of bespectacled college students wearing matching light blue T-shirts that read “Socialism Sucks.” When I asked them about the shirts, the Turning Point representatives told me that their main concern was limited government and the free market. They did not have many allies in what was, at that time, a right-wing populist revolt in the party, and they were circumspect about that year’s presidential candidate. TPUSA was still a libertarian college organization across a smattering of campuses. But that was to change radically in the coming years.

By the time Kirk was slain last September, Turning Point had become the most powerful organization on the American right. Its organizing model, which had proved effective for taking over chapters of the College Republicans group, became a durable base on which to build a highly coordinated national effort that trained legions of student organizers, connected grassroots groups with conservative celebrities and Republican Party elected officials, and tapped the resources of wealthy donors.

TPUSA played an important role in getting out the GOP vote in the 2020 election, but its biggest influence was yet to come. In 2021, much of the MAGA movement’s organized militant right had gone into retreat. Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Bikers for Trump and other groups that attacked Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020 and laid siege to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were discredited on the right and faced prosecution. Trump’s own political fortunes were hardly secure. From the top, a coalition of conservative think tanks led by the Heritage Foundation patiently strategized for a possible Trump victory in 2024, including by developing Project 2025, a blueprint for his second term.

That victory and many others depended on TPUSA, which used its growing organizing acumen to build a broad organization that would continue to stoke the fires of right-wing rage. Turning Point organizers would aid or lead campaigns of MAGA Republican candidates in cities, counties and states across the country through its lobbying arm, Turning Point Action. The GOP has depended on TPUSA’s formidable skills to win local and statewide elections in both solidly Republican and tightly contested, or “swing,” states. GOP leaders and elected officials flocked to Kirk and to Turning Point for credibility among conservative voters and activists. Meanwhile, Turning Point chapters on campuses across the country produced organizers, content creators, speechwriters, electoral strategists and candidates.

Pushing past the confines of libertarianism, the organization became increasingly rooted in evangelical Christianity, particularly the Seven Mountains Mandate, a belief popular among Christian nationalists that followers should seek influence in seven key areas of society — such as government, education, media and business — to shape culture according to biblical values. This evangelical turn helped give Turning Point’s mission a spiritual intensity, created meaningful community among its members and gave it access to churches, Bible colleges and growing Christian nationalist networks across the country.

At the heart of all this was Kirk, a uniquely talented and contradictory figure. He was, at once, a disrupter and institution-builder, entrepreneur and hustler, bridge-builder and polarizer, and — most famously — a person who issued dark warnings about children being lured away by leftist professors and trans groomers, only to prove himself the most gifted pied piper of all. In those roles, Kirk held together big donors and the activist base, party leaders and far-right insurgents, Black and Latino conservatives, Islamophobes, antisemites and white nationalists. If there was any figure on the American right who could both cement its past victories and promise it a glorious future, it was Kirk.

In the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s death, the GOP establishment was united in its desire to make him a national martyr. At the White House, Trump, Vice President JD Vance and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller all called for retribution against anyone who expressed anything but grief — preferably of the performative variety — over his killing. Congress established an official Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance on his birthday, Oct. 16. His massive, seven-hour memorial at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, brought together the entire leadership of the Trump administration with the major figures of the MAGA right to call for spiritual revival among the faithful and holy war against the left. The right reveled in this moment of renewed unity and purpose — but it was not to last. [Continue reading…]