Neither The Pandemic Nor Trump Has Changed The Republican Party-- Both Have Just Exposed The Base For What It Is

You wouldn't know from the way the mainstream media is constantly, incessantly harping on it, but ending social distancing-- backed by Trump-- is a fringe position among most Americans. Earlier today I was speaking with one of the Blue America-edorsed congressional candidates from Texas, Julie Oliver and she told me, defiantly, that "We aren't going to let Texas be defined by its smallest minds. Sandy Hook truthers and anti-vaccination extremists in no way represent us and the national media is gullibly covering an astro-turfed fringe group as if they're reflective of what people really think. And they do so while there are human rights violations carried out in our name, in our state, every day at the border. We need the media to connect the dots." A new Morning Consult poll for Politico shows that only 14% of respondents say Americans should stop social distancing to stimulate the economy even if it means increasing the spread of the virus (up 4 points from last week). On the other hand, 76%, say Americans should continue to social distance for as long as necessary, even if it means continued economic damage." Politically that translates into 44% of Americans saying they would vote to send a Democrat to Congress and 39% saying they would vote for a Republican. The poll also showed that Americans perceive Biden as a weak and useless candidate/leader, no matter what they think of Trump.

Yesterday, The Atlantic published an essay by Peter Wehner behind its paywall, The Party of the Aggrieved where he makes the point that "the pandemic has revealed the animating forces of the Republican Party in the age of Trump." The forces ain't pretty, but it's important to be aware of them, since they threaten all of our lives and well-being. He began by noting that just one day after announcing guidelines the nation’s governors can use to carry out an orderly reopening of their states, Señor Trumpanzee "openly encouraged protests against the social-distancing restrictions that have saved tens of thousands of American lives," thereby "ceding any semblance of national leadership on the pandemic, and choosing instead to divide the country by playing to his political base." That's Señor T to a t.

Maskless demonstrations-- some featuring Make America Great Again hats, semiautomatic weapons, flags with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and American and Confederate flags-- have now taken place in state capitals in Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. More are being planned.

“They’ve got cabin fever,” the president said of the protesters. “These are great people,” according to Trump. “These people love our country.”

The number of protesters at these rallies has varied from a few dozen to a few thousand. The importance of the protests isn’t so much their size but rather what they symbolize. It is a mistake to dismiss them.

The protests have become a rallying point for the right, encouraged by talk-radio and Fox News personalities such as Laura Ingraham, Jeanine Pirro, Tucker Carlson, and Brian Kilmeade. The anti-social-distancing rallies are drawing comparisons to the early days of the Tea Party movement.

Stephen Moore, who serves on Trump’s economic council to reopen the country, said, “So this is a great time, gentlemen and ladies, for civil disobedience. We need to be the Rosa Parks here, and protest against these government injustices.”

Even if one believes that some of the measures being put in place are too restrictive, this is hardly a Rosa Parks moment. The protesters, for their part, are not distinguishing themselves by making finely calibrated points about epidemiology or offering up more refined social-distancing plans. They are lashing out in frustration and in anger, frustration and anger that is being incited by the president and many-- although not all-- of his acolytes on the right.

Trump's eagerness to light the fuse is nothing new; it’s simply the latest manifestation of the president’s disordered mind, which I have written about before. He finds satisfaction not in resolving conflict, but in increasing it. That has been true for much of his life and all of his presidency.

In the midst of a lethal pandemic, Americans are striving for social cohesion and solidarity. They may yet achieve it, but if they do, it will be in spite of this president, not because of him. Trump is doing everything in his power to divide us, to keep people on edge, mistrustful and at one another’s throats. To that end, he will even cheer on people who are violating his own administration’s social-distancing guidelines.

But there is also method to Trump’s madness. From the moment he took office, the president has pursued a base-only strategy. Rather than trying to win over converts, Trump has decided his path to victory in November lies with inflaming his base, keeping his supporters in a state of constant agitation, even if that requires framing “a complex science/policy debate as evil oppressors vs. heroic victims,” in the words of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

Progressive Democrat Chris Armitage is running in the eastern Washington congressional district that Trump won in 2106 by a wide margin-- 52-39%. His opponent is Trump doormat Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Armitage told us that "Here in eastern Washington, the majority people have not allowed a pandemic to be partisan. We believe doctors and other medical professionals and are incredibly grateful for people who stand up to protect public health and safety."

In southwest Michigan, Trump's 2016 victory was narrower-- 51-43%-- and state Rep. Jon Hoadley is likely to knock off another Trump yes man, Fred Upton. "Here in Michigan," he told us on the phone, "we are lucky to have Gov. Whitmer leading the response and doing the right thing by listening to scientists and public health experts to keep Michiganders safe. Unfortunately, we also have Congressman Upton who is parroting President Trump and advocating for a rushed reopening that puts the health and safety of our communities at risk. We’re in a public health crisis, we must listen to scientists and public health experts about how to proceed and how to safely phase-out stay at home orders. Congressman Upton's choice to follow the lead of President Trump who called our global pandemic 'a hoax' instead of looking out for us with be one that voters across southwest Michigan will remember in November."

"I could be wrong," Omaha progressive Kara Eastman told us a few minutes ago, "but I think this virus is forcing many Republicans to re-think some of their positions. Many need government relief and the mythology that these are 'handouts' may be dissipating. Many are talking about the need to listen to the scientists (a departure for many climate change deniers). Many finally realize that our current healthcare system is wholly inadequate. All I can do as a candidate is try to speak to the issues that matter most to people and try to puncture these bubbles. I think it might be working..."

Back to Wehner, who wrote that Señor Trumpanzee is, as always, "acting the only way he knows how, but also in a way that resonates with the base of the party. He has succeeded in creating, at least among some significant number of his supporters, an almost cultlike attachment. The response to COVID-19, then, is acting like a CAT scan on the American right. What it reveals is alarming and, for those of us who have been lifelong Republicans, dispiriting." Well... actually most lifelong Republicans are not dispirited at all. They lap it up. Poor Wehner, doesn't get it. Most lifelong Republicans are not #NeverTrumpers like he and his friends, they're eager converts to the Death Cult. The corporate Democratic Party of Obama, Clinton, Biden, Schumer, Pelosi is where Republicans like Wehner belong. And an increasing trickle of his type of Republican has realized that. Wehner may too; something's telling him that his party is a nightmare and Donald Trump didn't make it that way.

I need to add, though, that it’s far too simple to say that what occurred with Donald Trump in 2016 and since was a “hostile takeover” of the GOP. Trump-- the only known con artist, conspiracy monger, and pathological liar in the 2016 GOP field-- gave the base of the party what it wanted, even as he toxified it, amplifying all the worst tendencies of the American right. To what degree Trump fundamentally changed the Republican Party, and to what degree he simply personified what it was becoming, is an impossible question to resolve. What we do know is that the base of the GOP and Donald Trump have now merged. There is no separation. (Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is 93 percent, according to Gallup.) The GOP is as much Donald Trump’s party today as it was Ronald Reagan’s party in the 1980s.

This pandemic and the response to it reveal some important things about the attitudes that animate the Republican Party in the age of Trump.

Trump’s supporters display a deepening mistrust of expertise of any kind, including medical figures such as Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In rallies around the nation, protesters are chanting “Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!” and holding up signs saying Fauci Lied, Main Street Died.

Fauci is hardly perfect; no one could be when dealing with a novel virus like the coronavirus. But the fact that Fauci is among the most experienced and respected epidemiologists in the world not only doesn’t reassure the protesters; for some number of Trump supporters, it is further reason to doubt him, since he must be part of the so-called deep state, which they view as implacably opposed to the president.

One person I know, who is very sympathetic to Trump and Trump’s supporters and is in constant touch with them, told me yesterday that the people he was hearing from felt a sense of solidarity with the protesters. (This individual asked for anonymity to speak candidly about these conversations.) Trump’s supporters took the president’s previous embrace of such guidelines as evidence that he was “being bamboozled by ‘deep-state actors’ like Fauci,” this person told me. “The natives are getting restless.”

During the pandemic, Trump supporters have relied heavily on Fox News and talk radio, which can be fountains of misinformation. The pandemic has deepened their grievances and tribalistic loyalties. And we’ve seen how eager many of the president’s supporters are to imagine themselves as heroic figures in a make-believe drama, as if demanding the right to go to a bowling alley or a nail salon during a pandemic makes them modern-day Thomas Paines.

“Government mandating sick people to stay home is called quarantine. However, the government mandating healthy citizens to stay home, forcing businesses and churches to close is called tyranny,” reads a statement released by Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine. One Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, protester’s sign quoted Jefferson: “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”

But what may be most unsettling just now is this: At a moment when states and local communities are trying to work together, when many churches and religious communities are seeking to be agents of support and healing, when health-care workers are risking their lives to save others, the president and many of his most devoted supporters are fomenting chaos, division, and antipathy. They want COVID-19 to be the latest battlefield in a never-ending culture war.

This is particularly worrisome because while some crises can unify a nation, pandemics have historically caused people to turn on one another. At the very moment we need as our national leader a person who can break down the dividing walls, who can strengthen our bonds of affection for one another, we have a president who is temperamentally determined to annihilate comity, a spirit of grace and self-giving, and feelings of empathy and compassion.

At least as worrisome is the president’s ability to marshal an army of supporters who model themselves after him, who take his lead, and who allow their sensibilities to be shaped by his.

There are exceptions, of course. Some Trump voters who strongly support his policies tell me they are disgusted by his ethical transgressions and antics. I know, too, Republican lawmakers who, in private, speak quite harshly about the president. But the justifications and rationalizations are getting a bit tiresome as Trump confirms with every passing day some of the gravest concerns about him-- psychological, emotional, cognitive, and moral. He is a badly damaged soul who draws energy by acting in ways that are degrading and dishonorable.

This is hardly a secret, and yet almost everyone in his own party-- with a few honorable exceptions, such as Utah Senator Mitt Romney and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan-- are complicit in the president’s desecrations. Donald Trump has broken them.

Whether or not the Republican Party can recover from the Trump years depends in part on how the Trump story ends. As a conservative, I believe the Republican Party can be saved. But it has to be worth saving. An essential step toward restoration is repudiation-- of Trump and of Trumpism. The GOP has to break free of both, and soon.

It may seem paradoxical, but those who care most about the future of the Republican Party need to hope for the defeat of this Republican president.