Olivia Nuzzi at NY Magazine profiles one of the high-powered GOP anonymous sources who chose their careers and the radical Republican agenda over patriotism:
He was of the Establishment but never deluded about the righteousness of his chosen side. George W. Bush, for instance, couldn’t earn his support because of “how badly he had fucked up” the Iraq War. “I still don’t think Republicans have been held to account completely for that,” he said. The election of the country’s first Black president gave life to right-wing extremism, and over eight years, polarization and negative partisanship — or hatred of the other side — accelerated as it hadn’t since the Gingrich revolution. By the end of the Obama administration, the party sounded more like Glenn Beck than Barry Goldwater, and although mainstream conservatives liked to pretend that the “crazies” said little about them, there was no denying that a fear of such people motivated much decision-making in Washington. This transformation all but invited what happened next.
Yet, eyes open, the Republican hadn’t anticipated a moral inconvenience like Donald Trump. “We were still fundamentally sane until Trump became the nominee,” he said of his party. Like just about everybody else, he didn’t believe Trump’s campaign was serious at first and didn’t believe he would win the Republican nomination. “I was one of those idiots. I remember telling family members there was zero percent chance,” he said. “When he became the nominee, I almost quit.” But he didn’t. Instead, when the test came, he found it was possible — easy, even — to put up with what he didn’t agree with and didn’t want to be associated with in order to climb and survive in Washington.
He figured the era of Trump’s dominance of his party would be over in November 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the election, as most polling and most so-called experts suggested she would. That wasn’t so far away, and he was “too pragmatic” to leave a big job that he had worked hard to get, and that he liked having, over something that was only temporary. “You could just tough it out for a few months,” he said, recalling his thinking then. “I thought he would lose! I mean, everyone thought he would lose. The idea that he won is still shocking. This is a man who is so completely alien to what this country — the best principles of what this country is about. When I think about the fact that a hundred years from now, people will look back and say, ‘How the fuck did they think this was normal?,’ it makes me sad for the country. He’s a permanent scar on the face of our country.”
When people look back and say that, the “they” to whom they’ll be referring will include this Republican and others like him. Even as he likes to see himself as a passive player, unable to do much beyond enable the president, he knows that much is true. He understands that being carried along in the stream of narrow self-interest is what brought Trump to the presidency in the first place and has kept him there for almost four years. Officially, there’s little daylight between the party and the president, and this Republican works for one of the most powerful people in the country, which means, looked at in one way, that he’s working for Trump, too. “If you ask the average well-informed observer,” he said, “I think they would say most every Republican is working for him.”
Oh, I don’t think that’s true. Donald Trump is working for them. He may not know it, but Mitch McConnell knows it. Brett Kavanaugh knows it. None of the establishment takes him seriously as a leader. They were willing to destroy the country for political power to pack the federal judiciary, cut taxes for their wealthy pals and destroy the administrative state.
This bit of insight by Nuzzi is worth pondering too:
Republicans whose identities remain secret tell reporters that, in private, everyone is mad at the president, they think he’s an idiot, he’s screwing up, whatever. Liberals and moderate media critics get together to roll their eyes at this grand display of cowardice, enabled by reporters like me who live for drama and are thus part of the problem, while the president’s supporters cry fabulism or conspiracy or both. My own self-serving justification for granting anonymity to Republicans connected to or able to provide insight into this White House is simple: If the choice is between being lied to on the record or told the truth “on background” (the technical term for anonymity), I will choose the truth every time — even though every time I choose the anonymous truth, I make it easier for this system of secrecy to continue. Actually, that’s too generous. It’s more truthful to say I’m part of a system that enables political leaders to have it both ways, to indulge in ugliness and irresponsibility and to distance themselves from their own actions. The press provides the alibi as it prosecutes the case.
It does. But as she says, I’ll take the truth every time. I have zero respect for these anonymous Trumpers who want to have it both ways, but if we didn’t have the inside story I’m afraid Trump would be much more popular than he is and much more likely to win re-election. These sources are cowardly, self-serving people but they didn’t keep his secrets and that’s worth a lot.
But this … this is just grotesque rationalizing that gives away the game:
[F]r officials whose identities are defined by the principals they serve — like this Republican — the choice can look like abiding almost anything to maintain proximity to power (“Everyone loves power,” as he put it) or defecting to the Never Trump wilderness… But that logic suggests an almost total indifference to policy and ideology, and the Republican insists that he isn’t indifferent, not entirely. He thinks Trump is “lazy,” “an awful person,” and “an idiot,” among other things. But he’s also against tax hikes and the Green New Deal. He believes in small government, in Washington staying out of the way. In fact, before the coronavirus pandemic, he thought the government’s managing to survive a failed executive was “almost a vindication of Republican principles” because most people, in his view, found they could get along just fine without a functioning federal government. Now, of course, “even small-government conservatives would say there’s a pretty big role for the federal government in our society,” he acknowledged.
“You’re not either a MAGA person or a Democrat,” he said. “There are some Republicans who think you should stick around and prevent the worst stuff from happening because he is the president, however odious that is, and it’s not gonna change until he’s voted out of office. If you just completely leave the field, you’re abdicating responsibility.” But he doesn’t actually believe that’s true. Not totally, anyway. “It’s definitely self-serving,” he said. “I mean, once you grow up, life is all about contradictions.” So he chose to become one. He exists now in a zombielike state somewhere between commitment and defection, his outward-facing self spiritually dead but his new identity not yet fully born. Or, put another way, he lives what you could call a lie.
That’s because he is a soulless opportunist who doesn’t deserve even the slightest respect.
As Never Trumper Tim Miller said on MSNBC earlier today, “being an adult doesn’t mean you live a contradiction, it means you make choices.” These people want their cake and they want to eat it too. And because they have been granted anonymity they will probably get away with it.
This is why the entire Republican Party must be shunned. This was one of those definitive crucibles in American history. Giving anonymous details to the press has been informative but it didn’t stop the destruction. Anyone who didn’t speak out publicly when they had the chance, who didn’t openly endorse Joe Biden and exhort others to do it too, are complicit.