Cowardice And A Grotesque Bargain With The Devil Is The Heart And "Soul" Of The Republican Party

 

AOC & Pramila-- Starting To Lose My Temper by Nancy Ohanian

On Friday, we noted that spineless Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has shown over and over again that he knows just how dangerous Trump is for America. On a taped conference call, Sasse said that Trump had mishandled the coronavirus response, "kisses dictators' butts," "sells out our allies," spends "like a drunken sailor," mistreats women, and trash-talks evangelicals behind their backs. Trump, he went on "flirted with white supremacists," and his family "treated the presidency like a business opportunity." In response to this accurate indictment, Sasse, obviously without a patriotic bone in his body, helped block removing Trump after he was impeached.

Trump reacted on Twitter in exactly the way you would expect, giving Sasse a nickname and sending a nasty signal to his Nebraska followers to not vote for him. (Luckily for Sasse, Schumer and the DSCC decided to give him a free-pass to reelection.)

NY Times reporter Catie Edmondson noted the exchange and interpreted it as Republican senators distancing themselves from Trump in fear that he's threatening their own political survival. A little too late for that. They're all on the record of enabling him and voting against convicting and removing him. "For nearly four years," wrote Edmondson, "congressional Republicans have ducked and dodged an unending cascade of offensive statements and norm-shattering behavior from President Trump, ignoring his caustic and scattershot Twitter feed and penchant for flouting party orthodoxy, and standing quietly by as he abandoned military allies, attacked American institutions and stirred up racist and nativist fears. But now, facing grim polling numbers and a flood of Democratic money and enthusiasm that has imperiled their majority in the Senate, Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to publicly distance themselves from the president. The shift, less than three weeks before the election, indicates that many Republicans have concluded that Mr. Trump is heading for a loss in November. And they are grasping to save themselves and rushing to re-establish their reputations for a coming struggle for their party’s identity."

She also noted that Sasse said Trump is "alienating voters so broadly that he might cause a 'Republican blood bath' in the Senate. [Note to Ben Sasse: in the House too.] Edmondson noted that Sasse "was echoing a phrase from Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who warned of a 'Republican blood bath of Watergate proportions.' Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the president’s most vocal allies, predicted the president could very well lose the White House.

Even the normally taciturn Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has been more outspoken than usual in recent days about his differences with the president, rejecting his calls to “go big” on a stimulus bill. That was a reflection of the fact that Senate Republicans-- who have rarely broken with the president on any major legislative initiative in four years-- are unwilling to vote for the kind of multitrillion-dollar federal aid plan that Mr. Trump has suddenly decided would be in his interest to embrace.

“Voters are set to drive the ultimate wedge between Senate Republicans and Trump,” said Alex Conant, a former aide to Senator Marco Rubio and a former White House spokesman. “It’s a lot easier to get along when you’re winning elections and gaining power. But when you’re on the precipice of what could be a historic loss, there is less eagerness to just get along.”

...[T]heir recent behavior has offered an answer to the long-pondered question of if there would ever be a point when Republicans might repudiate a president who so frequently said and did things that undermined their principles and message. The answer appears to be the moment they feared he would threaten their political survival.

If some Senate Republicans have written off Mr. Trump’s chances of victory, the feeling may be mutual. On Friday, the president issued his latest Twitter attack on Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the most endangered Republican incumbents, apparently unconcerned that he might be further imperiling her chances, along with the party’s hopes of holding on to the Senate.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Romney assailed the president for being unwilling to condemn QAnon, the viral pro-Trump conspiracy movement that the F.B.I. has labeled a domestic terrorism threat, saying the president was “eagerly trading” principles “for the hope of electoral victories.” It was his second scathing statement this week criticizing Mr. Trump, although Mr. Romney coupled both screeds with critiques of Democrats, saying the two parties shared blame.

Yet Mr. Romney and other Republicans who have spoken up to offer dire predictions or expressions of concern about Mr. Trump are all sticking with the president on what is likely his final major act before the election: the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a favorite of conservatives, to the Supreme Court.

The dichotomy reflects the tacit deal congressional Republicans have accepted over the course of Mr. Trump’s presidency, in which they have tolerated his incendiary behavior and statements knowing that he would further many of their priorities, including installing a conservative majority on the nation’s highest court.

Still, the grim political environment has set off a scramble, especially among Republicans with political aspirations stretching beyond Mr. Trump’s presidency, to be on the front lines of any party reset.

“As it becomes evident that he is a mere political mortal like everyone else, you’re really starting to see the jockeying taking place for what the future of the Republican Party is,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida who did not support Mr. Trump in 2016. “What we heard from Senator Sasse yesterday was the beginning of that process.”

In an interview, Mr. Curbelo said that his former colleagues have known for months that Mr. Trump would one day become “subject to the laws of political gravity”-- and that the party would face the consequences.

“Most congressional Republicans have known that this is unsustainable long term, and they’ve just been-- some people may call it pragmatic, some may call it opportunistic-- keeping their heads down and doing what they have to do while they waited for this time to come,” he said.

It is unclear whether Republicans will seek to redefine their party should the president lose, given that Mr. Trump’s tenure has shown the appeal of his inflammatory brand of politics to the crucial conservative base.

“He still has enormous, enormous influence-- and will for a very long time-- over primary voters, and that is what members care about,” said Brendan Buck, a former counselor to the last two Republican House speakers.

What Mr. Sasse and Mr. Cruz may be aiming for, he added, is a last-ditch bid to preserve Republican control of the Senate.

“If you’re able to say it out loud, there is an effective message that a Republican Senate can be a check on a Democratic-run Washington,” Mr. Buck said. “It’s just hard to say that out loud because you have to concede the president is done.”

On the campaign trail, Republicans are privately livid with the president for dragging down their Senate candidates, sending his struggles rippling across states that are traditional Republican strongholds.

“His weakness in dealing with coronavirus has put a lot more seats in play than we ever could have imagined a year ago,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster and consultant. “We always knew that there were going to be a number of close Senate races, and we were probably swimming against the tide in places like Arizona, Colorado and Maine. But when you see states that are effectively tied, like Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina, that tells you something has happened in the broader environment.”

In 2016, when Mr. Trump, then a candidate, looked increasingly likely to capture the party’s nomination, Mr. McConnell assured his members that if he threatened to harm them in the general election, they would “drop him like a hot rock.”

That did not happen then and it is unlikely to now, with Republicans up for re-election readily aware that Democratic voters are unlikely to reward such a rebuke, especially so close to Election Day. But there have been other, more subtle moves.

Despite repeated public entreaties from Mr. Trump for Republicans to embrace a larger pandemic stimulus package, Mr. McConnell has all but refused, saying senators in his party would never support a package of that magnitude. Senate Republicans revolted last weekend on a conference call with Mark Meadows, the president’s chief of staff, warning that a big-spending deal would amount to a “betrayal” of the party’s base and tarnish their credentials as fiscal hawks.

A more personal rebuke came from Mr. McConnell last week when the Kentuckian, who is up for re-election, told reporters that he had avoided visiting the White House since late summer because of its handling of the coronavirus.

They must be wiped out, not just on the level of the White House and Senate, but also in the House, in state legislatures and in local offices up and down the ballot. They have all been enablers and they should all be held accountable. Listen to Ben Sasse's own voice and remember that he has backed Trump on everything.

What Would You Do If A Sitting Democratic President Became As Morally Deranged And As Dangerous To National Security As Trump Is?

 

The Wall Street Journal's Joe Flint reported, just before Trump's clownish town hall stunt yesterday, that "More than one hundred prominent actors, writers and producers are protesting NBC News’s decision to carry [the thing] opposite a previously scheduled Joe Biden town hall on rival ABC News." That must have triggered the Orange Clown because was was soon carrying on about NBC and pretending the town hall was their idea, not his campaign's. "So you know, I’m being set up tonight, right. I’m doing this town hall with Con-cast. So I’m doing it and it’s NBC. The worst... And so they asked me if I’d do it, and I figured what the hell, we’ve got a free hour on television."

What a disgusting excuse for a human being! During his super-spreader event in Greenville, North Carolina yesterday, Trump, pandering to his crowd said only Jesus is more famous than he is. Someone should tell him the difference between "famous" and "infamous."

I'd trust Caroline Giuliani-- Rudy's daughter-- to do it. Yesterday Vanity Fair published a piece by her urging everyone to vote for Biden and Kamala: "If being the daughter of a polarizing mayor who became the president’s personal bulldog has taught me anything, it is that corruption starts with 'yes-men' and women, the cronies who create an echo chamber of lies and subservience to maintain their proximity to power. We’ve seen this ad nauseam with Trump and his cadre of high-level sycophants (the ones who weren’t convicted, anyway)."

And that brings us right to Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who has spent 4 years making it perfectly clear that he knows exactly what a dangerous monstrosity Trump is-- dangerous to this country-- and never could muster the guts to do anything about it. Sasse, as you recall, voted against impeachment. Yesterday, right-wing propagandist David Drucker wrote that "Sasse, in a private call with constituents, excoriated President Trump, saying he had mishandled the coronavirus response, 'kisses dictators' butts,' 'sells out our allies,' spends 'like a drunken sailor,' mistreats women, and trash-talks evangelicals behind their backs. Trump has 'flirted with white supremacists,' according to Sasse, and his family 'treated the presidency like a business opportunity.' In what appears to be a conference call with his Nebraska constituents, Sasse said Trump could drive the Senate into the hand of the Democrats and cause permanent damage to the Republican Party. It is unclear when the call occurred, though it had to have happened well into this year because Sasse discusses Trump's handling of the coronavirus... Leading up to the state’s Republican primary earlier this year, Sasse tempered his periodic criticism of Trump, perhaps to keep his longshot GOP challenger at bay. But the senator resumed his occasional tongue-lashing once he secured the renomination. At least, that is how Sasse’s pro-Trump critics on the right have interpreted his public comments regarding the president."

"The debate," continued Sasse, "is not going to be, 'Ben Sasse, why were you so mean to Donald Trump?' It’s going to be, 'What the heck were any of us thinking, that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?' We are staring down the barrel of a blue tsunami." Ben Sasse is a traitor to his own principles, to his own constituents and to the United States of America. He thinks he's better than Trump; he isn't.

Spineless by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, Bulwark writer Richard Patterson was bemoaning spineless creeps like Sasse, noting that "because Trump is immutably pathological, he’s incapable of growth as a politician or president," implying-- strongly-- that Republicans have had years to figure this out and act as patriots instead of ass-lickers.

How did the GOP find itself in this desperate, seamy dilemma? The short answer is four years of subservience to Trump. But it is nonetheless instructive to consider what the party had become before his advent-- and how he might have helped save it had he been not only a normal person, but the unconventional political genius some conjured from the ether.

By 2012, the GOP had come to rely on a partially overlapping base of evangelicals; whites without college degrees threatened by economic dislocation; and malcontents whose distrust of government partook of paranoia. These folks were not natural allies of the party of business or its wealthy donors. In exchange for pursuing the economic agenda of the wealthy, the GOP increasingly offered up a primal vision rooted in culture wars, contempt for government, and scapegoating blacks, immigrants, Muslims and other minorities.

The real causes of blue-collar woes were globalization, the Great Recession, the housing crisis, and an information society which marginalized the undereducated. About this, the GOP elite did nothing-- not about student debt, stagnant wages, dwindling benefits, diminishing job security, retraining for the new economy, or the widespread unaffordability of quality medical care. The epitome of their nihilism was Ted Cruz: a grandstanding opportunist who tried to shut down the government while assembling a stunted coalition of evangelicals, gun fanatics, nativists, climate-change deniers, and Tea Party atavists.

By the primary season of 2016, that covered most of the GOP base. The party’s only realistic alternative to Cruz was an incendiary and ideologically unmoored interloper-- Donald Trump.

Had the RNC’s then-Chairman Reince Priebus and foresighted party officials and consultants gotten their way, this trajectory would have been different. After Mitt Romney lost in 2012, these seasoned professionals concluded that the GOP was headed for demographic oblivion. The result was the widely-touted “autopsy” which called for a comprehensive rethinking of Republican electoral strategy.

Its analysis was unsparing-- and proactive. The GOP had been “continually marginalizing itself,” said Sally Bradshaw, one of the autopsy’s authors. “We have lost the ability to be persuasive with or welcoming to those who don’t agree with us on every issue.”

The party, she added, “needs to do better with women” and to become “inviting and inspiring.” Another of the autopsy’s authors warned that “if our party isn’t welcoming and inclusive, young people and increasingly other voters will continue to tune us out.” Among the solutions proposed was an extensive outreach to women, African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and LGBT voters which included embracing “comprehensive immigration reform.”

But that last, in particular, ran athwart the nativist passions roiling much of the GOP base. Faced with their fury for his cosponsorship of an immigration reform bill, Marco Rubio folded. Broadening the party’s appeal, it seemed clear, would require a nominee with the vision and gifts to propitiate its restive electorate.

Enter Donald Trump. In 2013, he tweeted: “New @RNC report calls for embracing ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’ Does the @RNC have a death wish?”

Smart Republicans foresaw the consequences. Said Jon Huntsman in 2016: “The party itself is less consequential than ever before, and... the tribal differences are increasingly irreconcilable... If Trump prevails, he will have single-handedly upended the old Republican order and built a new movement in its place. The question then will be, is it sustainable?”

...Particularly problematic is that Trump’s appeal-- while fatally limited-- has among the base a visceral depth which transcends loyalty to the party, its elected officials, or whatever threadbare ideas it retains. The party of Trump has become a cult of personality suffused with authoritarianism.

...As president, Trump has pushed the boundaries of our constitutional democracy to achieve unprecedented executive power. Not only do his followers support this, but elected Republicans have done nothing to stop him.

The GOP is no longer about ideas like limited government, or the higher ideals of inclusiveness and an American Dream open to all. Its toxic compound of raw anger and nativist passion is, at bottom, about subjugating the demographic “other.”

Before Trump, the GOP’s better angels were already enfeebled. In 2016 he killed them off.

It is barely possible now to imagine the GOP had Trump been different. He came without ideology, propelled by a gift for embodying a potent but undefined populism. He might have become an agent of constructive reinvention, eschewing racism and xenophobia in favor of offering embattled middle-class and blue-collar workers genuine economic uplift. He could have reinstated fiscal responsibility by disdaining tax cuts for the wealthy. He might even have taken steps-- if not to drain the swamp-- at least to reform it.

But that would have required real talent, sustained attention, and a genuine interest in governance. Instead this irredeemably vicious, vacant, and narcissistic demagogue unleashed white identity politics and the endless overreach of Republican donors. This leads inexorably to the deadest of ends-- a demographic death knell for his party and, for our democracy, the most grievous of wounds.

Take a bow, Governors Charlie Baker (R-MA) and Larry Hogan (R-MD). This morning, the Washington Post reported that Hogan voted already-- and not for Señor Trumpanzee. And in a statement released yesterday by his office, Baker said "The governor cannot support Donald Trump for president and is focused on seeing Massachusetts through the pandemic."