Last week’s events reveal the extent to which the Republican Party has rotted from the inside. Donald Trump is not only their avatar. He is the insecure bully whom Republican “leaders” now openly emulate. The Party of Trump is not just rhetoric. He is them. They are him.
The Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City concluded with the censure of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for upholding their oaths of office. That is, for cleaving to the Constitution before Trump.
The party is “loath to antagonize Trump and possibly drive off his hard-core followers,” MSNBC reported from the scene. “Yet in interviews, party officials showed little appetite for organizing the GOP around Trump’s grievances.”
“[T]hey are all too cowardly and/or craven to do anything about it,” as Heather Digby Parton put it.
The party of violent insurrection tripled/quadrupled down, officially declaring that through their work with the Jan. 6 House inquiry, the pair of Republican apostates participated in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
Party chair Ronna McDaniel attempted to walk back the declaration, saying, “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.” Of course, citizens unconnected to the violence are not the panel’s focus.
Mike Pence, the former vice president, took a year to summon the courage to call out Trump for attempting a coup. It would have been “un-American” of him to reject state slates of 2020 electors at Trump’s request. “President Trump is wrong” in believing the vice president had the authority to do so, Pence told a Federalist Society meeting in Florida.
Even a stopped clock
Trump loyalist Steve Bannon condemned Pence for his statements during his War Room: Pandemic podcast, branding Pence “a stone-cold coward.” Even a stopped clock, they say:
“My head’s blowing up,” Bannon said. “I can’t take Pence. And I can’t take Pence and Marc Short and all these Koch guys up there ratting out Trump up on Capitol Hill right now.”
Heather Cox Richardson observed in her Friday substack, “It seems that we might be able to choose better leaders than ones who are leaving us at the end of this day in 2022 with the truly legitimate political question: ‘Ratting him out for what?’”
While there are a few flickers of conscience left among party electeds, the party’s elite and its rank-and-file have given themselves over to Trumpism. They are self-anointed victims, whiners, drones, followers, not leaders.
The problem with news coverage and Democrats’ response, says my friend BeninSC, is that no one is making an issue of that:
It almost never happens that a Republican takes a stand independently of the party line. That means that almost NO Republicans are – or CAN BE – Leaders. They are ALL followers. What Republican can counter the argument that that party doesn’t need human beings for candidates, when they are ALL rubber stamps. What Republican can counter the question of where their representation of the citizens of their geographical area differs from Republican-mandated positions? If EVERY position is dictated by their leadership, how can anyone think of them as leaders? They can’t answer the question of naming anything they disagree with their party on, or they’ll be primaried out of office. Because gerrymandering insures that whatever Republican runs in the general for that seat will win it. They can’t answer the question of how their loyalty to the COUNTRY can ever be greater than loyalty to their party, because their votes NEVER diverge from loyalty to the party.
“All of that is a STAGGERING political weakness” Democrats ought to exploit, BeninSC adds.
In election time, the entirety of Republican ads are negative. None focus on their achievements, their positions for positive change. Because they HAVE no achievements, other than blocking or HITTING Democrats. And they have no ideas to make anything better.
“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking,” said Gen. George S. Patton. That certainly describes the Trump cult. Or any cult.
In fear of being “replaced,” or more accurately, of losing white cultural and political dominance, a Republican Party that a decade ago was already 90% white is no longer “willing to defend democratic values and institutions.” Republican politicians hoping to cling to power bow and scrape before an autocratic demagogue. They are not fit to lead.
That ought to be an explicit campaign issue for Democrats.
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