The Unbearable Denialism of the Center
by tristero
Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner wrote gawd-knows-how-many words for the Sunday Times asserting that the Republican party may abandon Trump. Even they know it’s bullshit:
Being sane, we understand why the prospect of Mr. Trump’s being forced to resign or face impeachment and conviction before the end of his term is unlikely.
So why did they type up such utterly dishonest nonsense? Perhaps it was merely to advance one of the most beloved of all centrist myths. The problem with the Republicans today, according to “moderates” like these fine fellows, begins with Trump and therefore will end when he is gone:
The most troubling — and from our point of view the most disappointing — development of the Trump era is not the president’s own election and subsequent behavior; it is the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party. The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency. It has allowed itself to be hijacked by a reality television star who is a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself.
Rauch and Wehner actually believe that the decent men (and the few women) of the GOP have allowed themselves to be “hijacked” by Trump and then the Republican party “abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency.”
This is so delusional as to border upon the psychotic. One counter- example: Mitch McConnell’s refusal to permit a vote on Merrick Garland. I can think of thousands of other times over the past 40 years when the non-Trump members of the GOP have exhibited institutional corruption, weakness, and blatantly betrayed their own values.
Sorry, boys. Trump never “hijacked” the modern Republican party. Trump embodies modern Republican values.