Ron DeSantis is next
A googolplex of pixels already has documented the former president’s dinner last week with Ye (formerly Kanye West) and antisemite-white-supremacist freak show Nick Fuentes. No one is surprised that Trump would entertain such illuminaries at Mar-a-Lago. Nor is anyone convinced by Donald Trump spokespersons’ denials that TFG knew who Fuentes is. Nor by Republican pooh-bahs’ dissembling.
But consider what the hoo-ha says about the Republican Party, says Karen Tumulty. The party that purged Birchers in the 1960s cannot quit Trump. For all their per forma condemnation of his dinner guests’ opinions, Republicans remain loathe to criticize the 76-year-old boy-king himself. Save perhaps for retiring Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R).
The ranks of the GOP’s rank in Congress will be larger come January, Tumulty writes (Washington Post):
And those who have followed Trump’s example in associating themselves with extremists and their ideas will have more clout within the institution. Earlier this year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) spoke at a conference organized by Fuentes, later claiming (as Trump has about last week’s dinner) that she didn’t know who he was; House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has promised, if he becomes speaker, to restore her committee assignments, which the Democratic-controlled House stripped the Georgia congresswoman of in 2021 because of her incendiary comments.
Meanwhile, don’t expect much by way of correctives to be offered as the GOP gets ready to elect its next party chair in January. McDaniel, who was handpicked by Trump to run the party after the 2016 election and who has been a model of obeisance to him since, has indicated she plans to run for another term.
As for GOP critics of Ye and Fuentes, have they “been in a coma since 2015? [Trump has] been keeping company with extremists, bigots, and charlatans for a long time—since before he entered politics, in fact,” writes David Frum (The Atlantic):
In 2017, Trump was necessary, and so he had to be defended. In 2022, Trump is inconvenient, and so he can be condemned.
But only Trump. There’s going to be no condemnation of Kevin McCarthy for basing his power in the House on the political circle associated with Trump’s dinner guests. McCarthy is necessary, and so he has to be defended.
Necessary as in for maintaining and wielding the power to dominate people they believe their inferiors. The GOP’s moral compass points to power, whatever its blathering about stolen elections, children’s safety, socialism/communism, immigrants, and anyone non-gender-conforming. And its magnetic pole is not simply preserving power for the GOP donor class and white Christian nationalists, but power for power itself. All else is provisional, including preserving our constitutional republic.
The acid test for the GOP base will be Trump’s performance in the first 2024 primaries.
One thing is certain: If Trump does repeat that primary performance, if he can rally GOP voters in 2024 and oppose the big money, if all those Trump loyalists who took control of state party organizations in the 2010s stay loyal in the 2020s, then Trump can be sure that the condemnation by rich and connected Republicans of his dinner with Fuentes will vanish—poof! The condemnation is a ploy, not a principle.
If Trump proves he still has the juice in 2024, the GOP rank-and-file will, compasses in hand, go along to get along. And should Trump falter, the principled flock will pivot to follow Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as swiftly as a murmuration of starlings.
“Richard Nixon once instructed a new staffer, Richard Whalen,” historian Rick Perlstein wrote in 2005, “‘Flexibility is the first principle of politics.'”