The Bulwark’s JV Last distilled what we all know about the GOP and their voters into a nice concise analysis:
Roughly speaking, there are six things an elected Republican could say about an indictment of Donald Trump:
1.Trump’s alleged actions are deeply concerning.
2.Let the legal process play out; I have faith in our justice system.
3.No comment.
4.Yes, Trump’s alleged actions are concerning; but because of various externalities, the wiser course of action would have been to not indict.
5.Democrats and this Soros-backed prosecutor are out of control. We will fight this to the bitter end.
6.Donald Trump is innocent of all charges; this is a miscarriage of justice.This is not science, but my sense is that the distribution of these positions among elite Republicans will look basically like this:¹
The two unlabeled slivers are “These allegations are troubling” and “wiser not to indict.” I peg them at 1% positions.
Maybe I’m off at the margins But this is close enough for the purposes of our discussion. So let’s move on.
Now this also isn’t science, but here is my rough sense of the percentages of elite Republicans who secretly wish Trump would disappear versus the percentage who really want more Trump:
Do I have this exactly right? Probably not. But we’re in the ballpark. Give elite Republican veritas serum and the majority of them will tell you that they want Trump to go away and it doesn’t matter how.
This creates an obvious tension with the first chart. If a strong majority of Republican elites want Trump gone, then why is a supermajority of them going to the mattresses to either proclaim that Trump is innocent or attack the legal case against Trump?
What we have here is a paradox of pain.
And now we get to the part that is science. Because we have lots of polling on how Republican voters feels about Trump. They approve of him. They want him leading the party. And they want him running for president in 2024.
The source of the paradox becomes clear now, yes?
Republican elites are desperate to get rid of Trump. But they know that their own voters are deeply invested in keeping Trump. So they will respond to an event which could achieve their objective by visibly trying to prevent it from achieving their objective.
And all the while secretly hoping that their efforts at intervention will fail.
Which is something we’ve seen before:
On Monday, Jan. 11, Mr. McConnell met over lunch in Kentucky with two longtime advisers, Terry Carmack and Scott Jennings. Feasting on Chick-fil-A in Mr. Jennings’s Louisville office, the Senate Republican leader predicted Mr. Trump’s imminent political demise.
“The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to the imminent impeachment vote in the House.
Which brings us to a second paradox: If Republicans have been here before, and tried this strategy, and seen it fail, then why are they doing it again?
There are a couple plausible explanations: principle or negative polarity, for instance.
But my best guess is it’s because elite Republicans are at such a disconnect with their voters that they simultaneously disdain and fear them.
That’s why you’re forever seeing anonymous Republicans quoted in news reports giving their true feelings about Trump. That’s why you saw all of that private correspondence in the Fox / Dominion lawsuit.
And then remember this?
On the House floor [on Jan. 6], moments before the vote, Meijer approached a member who appeared on the verge of a breakdown. He asked his new colleague if he was okay. The member responded that he was not; that no matter his belief in the legitimacy of the election, he could no longer vote to certify the results, because he feared for his family’s safety. “Remember, this wasn’t a hypothetical. You were casting that vote after seeing with your own two eyes what some of these people are capable of,” Meijer says. “If they’re willing to come after you inside the U.S. Capitol, what will they do when you’re at home with your kids?”
[Gonzalez] made clear that the strain had only grown worse since his impeachment vote, after which he was deluged with threats and feared for the safety of his wife and children.
Mr. Gonzalez said that quality-of-life issues had been paramount in his decision. He recounted an “eye-opening” moment this year: when he and his family were greeted at the Cleveland airport by two uniformed police officers, part of extra security precautions taken after the impeachment vote.
“That’s one of those moments where you say, ‘Is this really what I want for my family when they travel, to have my wife and kids escorted through the airport?’” he said.
“If you look at the vote to impeach, for example, there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security – afraid, in some instances, for their lives,” [Liz Cheney] said.
Asked if she would have signed it [a letter urging the state’s congressional delegation to reject President Biden’s win], [Kim Ward] indicated that the Republican base expected party leaders to back up Mr. Trump’s claims — or to face its wrath.
“If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’” she said about signing the letter, “I’d get my house bombed tonight.”
There are so many more.
Whatever you want to say about Democratic elites and their voters, the two groups are basically in-sync. And to the extent that Democratic elites are out of sync with their base, they aren’t terrified of these voters. Joe Manchin had kayakers yelling at his house boat. Kyrsten Sinema was followed into a bathroom by rude college students. Neither are concerned about militia dudes with long guns.
Republicans have discovered that their voters are bullies. And rather than stand up to these bullies, or switch parties, they hope that someone else will deal with them on their behalf—even as they enable the bullies and make a show of defending them.
He’s right. Obviously. But what did they think would happen when they radicalized a bunch of armed racists? Did they think they would be immune?
As for the elites, I do think they have a plan: wait this out until Trump dies and then everything will go back to normal. And they’re right. Without Trump the party will still be a bunch of radicalized armed racists but he won’t be there to agitate against them. That’s all that matters.