Never underestimate Democrats in a presidential election year. In a replay of three weeks ago when they forced President Joe Biden offstage and coronated Kamala Harris without a smidgen of dissent, the American party of the globalist left — dubbed at times the Evil Party—circled the wagons like clockwork after the vice president introduced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate last week.

Such a show of force since the Democrats rallied in Philadelphia stands in stark contrast with the shenanigans of what’s been called the Stupid Party. While almost all elected Republican officials have endorsed Donald Trump, influential GOP players and voices—especially the Wall Street Journal editorial board—continue to critique the 45th president’s every move, comment, and policy pronouncement.

Potshots remain equally aimed at J.D. Vance, the most gifted spokesman of Americans-First statecraft among Republican officeholders. Among the Journal’s dutiful shills, Allysia Finley has already trashed Trump’s running mate in back-to-back columns, mocking his domestic manufacturing agenda last week while attacking the social conservative the week before for noting the childless pattern among high-profile Democrats. Meanwhile, several GOP members of Congress and establishment backbiters have deemed the Marine-turned-businessman “the worst [VP] choice,” all set to blame the senator should Trump lose in November.

And spare us the self-righteous David French, who assured his faux-conservative choir singing with the New York Times his dubious claims that a Democratic victory will trigger a 2028 GOP comeback, blind to the culturally Marxist onslaught surely to unfold with Kamala and Tim running the show.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Neither cable news junkies nor avid followers of political websites will detect any grumbling regarding the selection of the Minnesota governor among the Democrats or their media intermediaries. That’s a result of remarkable party discipline, given that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro would have likely enabled the Democrats to capture the Keystone State’s 19 electoral votes, as both GOP and Democratic strategists had anticipated.

Like Harris, Walz is weaker than the prospects who were overlooked—and may have warranted pushback from the troops, especially as his selection offers the GOP ticket a needed reset and a ton of ammunition. His Land of 10,000 Lakes hasn’t voted for a Republican ticket since Nixon in 1972. Yet the Democrats fully grasp the consequence of loose lips on the high seas of political warfare.

Not so the Republicans. The K Street-Wall Street axis of power— including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, and the Koch donor network of think tanks and activist groups — blatantly oppose Republican voters on Ukraine, immigration, industrial policy, and globalist trade.

And loathing Vance’s call this week for a $5,000 per-child tax credit, the bosses fear the hillbilly’s passion for shoring up U.S. family economics will crowd out tax cuts for globalist investors. Consequently, they express little enthusiasm for returning Trump to the White House or elevating Vance to preside over the Senate.

This disconnect wasn’t always the case. All factions of the Republican universe formed a united front behind Reagan-Bush in 1980 and 1984.

Although Pat Buchanan ran a primary against George H.W. Bush, the challenger delivered the most memorable speech of the 1992 GOP convention in Houston. Not only did the Trump forerunner, warning about the perils of globalization, yield his unwavering support to the 41^st president but also the party and its fellow travelers rallied for Bush-Quayle against Bill Clinton.

Likewise for George W. in 2000 and 2004, even as the Bush-Cheney administration would prove a disaster in its second term, leaving the party in disarray from which it has not yet fully recovered.

The party’s kindred spirits across the Atlantic also share a history of supporting their standard bearer, as the conservatives of the Tory party fully backed Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Randolph Churchill, not to mention the latter’s son Winston, all policy ancestors of Trump, per former Trump speechwriter Frank Buckley.

But breaking from that winning pattern, as Trump has singlehandedly weaned the party away from globalist attachments in a Reagan-like effort to align the GOP with Middle America, the GOP overlords are sowing discord, undermining the Trump-Vance playbook, and threatening what should be a decisive Republican victory.

It may be that Murdoch and his minions just aren’t concerned about winning back the White House. Their rhetoric suggests they want The Donald to lose; the Journal’s dig last week anticipated he might “blow another election.” That result would mean more control of the party with Trump out of the picture.

Indeed, if Trump breaks through the blue walls of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin like in 2016, his second administration will not be relying on the neocons, as the 47^th president will end the Ukraine disaster. Nor will he need the libertarian supply-siders and free traders, as the discredited theorists would oppose an all-of-industry and all-of-government campaign to reindustrialize the U.S. and halt the trade profligacy that lies at the heart of our economic malaise.

The same crowd that has spoiled GOP electoral prospects for twenty years will be on the outs, although the White House will have to be prepared if the donor classes recruit their stooges in Congress, and players in the administration, to block or dilute the Trump-Vance agenda, as they did in the first term.

But for right now, the Party of Lincoln needs to focus like never before on the presidential horserace. If it can match the discipline of the Evil Party and do everything necessary to win, including putting all hands on deck for Trump-Vance, Republicans could shed their moniker as the Stupid Party.

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Mr. Patterson was an associate commissioner for communications at the Social Security Administration, 2017–19. He also served as a speechwriter at HHS and the Small Business Administration under President George W. Bush. Bracketing his service to President Trump, Patterson was the 2016 Republican nominee in New Jersey’s first congressional district and a 2020 GOP candidate in New Jersey’s second congressional district.