The slow devolution of the Republican Party into the Cult of Trump can be summed up in the trajectory of Ala. Gov. Kay Ivey (R), writes Paul Krugman. The woman who once urged her citizens to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and declared that the unvaccinated are “letting us down,” months later ordered state agencies not to cooperate with federal vaccination mandates. Her journey tracks her party’s path on multiple issues, as Krugman sees it:
When we talk about the G.O.P.’s moral descent, we tend to focus on the obvious extremists, like the conspiracy theorists who claim that climate change is a hoax and Jan. 6 was a false flag operation. But the crazies wouldn’t be driving the Republican agenda so completely if it weren’t for the cowards, Republicans who clearly know better but reliably swallow their misgivings and go along with the party line. And at this point crazies and cowards essentially make up the party’s entire elected wing.
Consider, for example, the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves. In 1980 George H.W. Bush, running against Ronald Reagan for the Republican presidential nomination, called that assertion “voodoo economic policy.” Everything we’ve seen since then says that he was right. But Bush soon climbed down, and by 2017 even supposed “moderates” like Susan Collins accepted claims that the Trump tax cut would reduce, not increase, the budget deficit. (It increased the deficit.)
Or consider climate change. As recently as 2008 John McCain campaigned for president in part on a proposal to put a cap on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But at this point Republicans in Congress are united in their opposition to any substantive action to limit global warming, with 30 G.O.P. senators outright denying the overwhelming scientific evidence that human activities are causing climate change.
The falsehoods that are poisoning America’s politics tend to share similar life histories. They begin in cynicism, spread through disinformation and culminate in capitulation, as Republicans who know the truth decide to acquiesce in lies.
“Flexibility is the first principle of politics,” Richard Nixon once told a new staffer.
Whether the Big Lie or small ones of the kind spread via Facebook or a blizzard of Donald Trump’s spread “without corrections or fact checks” via the Wall Street Journal, lies told repeatedly and with apparent conviction are good enough for the ne’er-do-well heirs of the Enlightenment in the Cult of Trump. And more useful even than flexibility for advancing a program of political sabotage that affects the death of their own supporters.
And true to form, elected Republicans like Governor Ivey who initially spoke in favor of vaccines have folded and surrendered to the extremists, even though they must know that in so doing they will cause many deaths.
I’m not sure exactly why cowardice has become the norm among elected Republicans who aren’t dedicated extremists. But if you want to understand how the G.O.P. became such a threat to everything America should stand for, the cowards are at least as important a factor as the crazies.
Among the unelected are the believers lining up to drink the kool-aid and make death threats against heretics.