This is the third in an accidental series on autocracy’s handmaidens. I didn’t set out to do that; it’s just that the news is making it unavoidably so.
First, we looked at the despicable role of the Supreme Court in abetting Trump’s neo-authoritarian project while trying to maintain its pose of holier-than-thou high-mindedness. Then, at the role of us ordinary Americans, on whose docile cooperation that project depends. This week, we survey a few key leaders within the Republican Party who recently have had a real opportunity to stand up and defy this far right movement, but for various self-serving reasons decided……Nahhhhhhh.
Would I prefer to finish the essay on the re-release of Stop Making Sense that I’ve had on deck for like six months? Yes. So, friends, please fix our fucking democracy so I can chill out.
THE PARTY’S OVER
Remember when Donald Trump was a parvenu in the Republican Party, widely criticized by its mandarins as unfit for office, not a “real conservative,” and an electoral disaster waiting to happen?
He now owns the Republican National Committee lock, stock, and barrel. (Look for it on the Trump Organization website, next to the steaks, bottled water, Chinese-made neckties, and worthless university degrees.)
Last week the RNC shitcanned its chairwoman, Ronna Romney McDaniel—a Trump toady who had already turned on her own uncle in favor of Donald—and replaced her with Trump’s own daughter-in-law, Lara, Eric’s wife, who is co-chair along with chairman Michael Whatley, a Big Lie proponent and longtime Trump booster.
The new regime wasted no time cleaning house. The WaPo reports: “The (RNC’s) senior leadership has been almost entirely replaced or reassigned, while dozens of lower-ranking officials including state directors were either fired or told to reapply for their jobs. A nationwide network of community outreach centers, once a fixture of the party’s efforts to attract minority voters, will be shuttered or refocused on get-out-the-vote efforts.” One inside source called it “an absolute bloodbath.”
This is true cult-of-personality, fascist state stuff, and the final obliteration of the Grand Old Party’s claim that it is the Party of Lincoln with a proud tradition of blah blah blah.
Perhaps the scariest thing for Republicans is the effect of all this on downballot GOP candidates, who can’t possibly miss the unmistakable signal that this new Trumpified RNC—like Trump himself—cares not a shit about them or their races.
Ideologically speaking, it marks the end of old school Republicanism that some of my conservative friends continue to insist is the heart of the GOP, and its final codification as the outright party of White Christian nationalism. As Heather Cox Richradson writes: “Rather than calling for a small federal government that stays out of the way of market forces, as Republicans have advocated since 1980, the new Trump Party calls for a strong government that enforces religious rules and bans abortion; books; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; and so on.”
Bonus irony, for those old enough to remember: The purge and subsequent revamp is being led by Trump advisor Chris LaCivita, the same guy who led the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” smear campaign against John Kerry in 2004. Quick explainer, for those too young to remember: that was one of the most deceptive, dishonest, and despicably effective political ad campaigns in US history, one that convinced much of America that the son of a former US President who used his family connections to avoid going to war (and possibly didn’t even complete his Stateside Air National Guard service), was an uber-patriot, and the guy who actually went to Vietnam, and got wounded there, and who had a chestful of medals, was somehow an un-American traitor.
That ought to be an indicator of the kind of criminal, bare knuckles campaign Team Trump intends to run, and how gallingly successful it can be.
Are you shocked?
COUNTRY FIRST (BUT THE COUNTRY IS RUSSIA)
The GOP’s humiliating surrender to Trump is now complete. There are dudes in federal prison who get sodomized on a regular basis who have more dignity and agency than the leadership of the Republican Party. (If there’s any justice, Trump himself will be in that orange-suited population soon.)
Of course, in another sense, it is woefully off-base even to think of this dynamic in terms of the GOP “surrendering” to Trump. That formulation assumes that a hostile takeover is in play. It is not. The Republican Party is thrilled to have Trump; if it were not, it would have dumped him long ago. Even those old school “Rockefeller Republicans” who profess to have misgivings wind up bending the knee, if they want to remain in the Party’s good graces. Ask Oklahoma Sen. Jim Lankford, as right wing a politician as he can be, who nevertheless got censured by his own state party last week for the sin of brokering a bipartisan border deal that Trump subsequently disliked.
Even the most left-leaning outlets are susceptible to this fake narrative that there is still a “normie” wing of the GOP. Reporting on Nikki Haley dropping out of the presidential race, MSNBC (of all nets) recently ran a chyron that read, “Republicans Fail to Stop MAGA Movement.”
Et tu, MSNBC? When is the media gonna figure it out? The Republicans are not even TRYING to stop Trump. They don't WANT to stop Trump. Trump IS the Republican Party. This chyron is like one that reads, "Arsonists Fail to Put Out Fire."
(It was especially galling that this chyron should appear over an interview with former Republican-turned hardcore Never Trumper Charlie Sykes, who has been loudly sounding this very alarm for years.)
But that fealty to the Dear Leader need not be so blunt and brazen in order to do harm.
The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last has coined a law: “Any person or institution which is not explicitly anti-Trump will become a tool for authoritarianism eventually.”
We saw it with Moscow Mitch McConnell, who just endorsed Trump, despite years of acrimony between them, despite his speech during Trump’s second impeachment holding him “morally responsible” for January 6th, despite Trump insulting and humiliating him and launching a racist attack on his wife, Elaine Chao, formerly Trump’s own Labor Secretary. The rationale, we’re told, is that Mitch thinks a Trump win in November will give the GOP the best bet to hold onto the Senate, which is all he cares about. (Which is another way of saying that all he cares about is himself.)
Is it fun to watch Mitch get emasculated like this? Kinda. If only it weren't at the feet of an even worse swine. A powerful, long-serving US senator on the cusp of retirement, with a history of hostility toward his party's presidential candidate, could give that candidate the middle finger on the way out. But if Mitch had that kind of integrity, he wouldn't be a craven POS in the first place.
We saw it again with the vastly overpraised Nikki Haley, who angered critics by not being more vocal in her condemnation of Trump when she ended her presidential run, after taking it to him fairly hard in the pyrrhic, what-have-I-got-to-lose endstage of her always hopeless campaign.
But again: should we really be surprised? A supposedly moderate conservative, Nikki ran on standard godawful GOP rhetoric, stood by Alabama’s fetal personhood decision, and promised to pardon Trump if she were elected president. Tell me again how she’s better than Donald?
When Nikki left the race, she did a pretty good Pontius PIlate impression in washing her hands of what happens from here. She certainly didn’t tell her supporters not to go over to Trump. Last writes, “If there’s been a more cowardly statement over the last year, I can’t think of it.....(Nikki Haley) has resigned herself to being a useful tool for Trump’s ongoing authoritarian attempt.” Don’t be surprised if she shows up on his ticket come summer.
And speaking of Nikki, we saw Last’s law in action with Haley supporter Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. Another alleged moderate, Sununu has also been highly critical of Trump, including calling him a “loser” and saying he should face the legal music in his various criminal proceedings. That’s the kind of behavior that earned him the same sort of undeserved credit from desperate and dewy-eyed liberals that Nikki got. (The bar for principle in the GOP is pretty low.)
But now that Nikki is out, Sununu has said that he will vote for Trump. "I'm going to support the ticket. I'm going to support Donald Trump.”
Guess he didn’t get the memo about “country over party.”
Acknowledging his previous criticism of Trump, Sununununu remarked, "Look, I don't take any of that back, to be sure. But again, understand this is an alternative. I mean, the alternative is Biden.”
So Trump is really bad but Biden is somehow worse? That mindset is not going to age well. “Yeah, Mussolini’s a monster, but I’m loyal party guy.”
OO-OOH THAT SMELL
These Republicans, who have not the courage of those who left the party in disgust—like David Jolly or Michael Steele or Bill Kristol or Charlie Sykes or Tim Miller or George Conway—are looking down the barrel of history’s harshest judgment.
Sununu is on record arguing that our institutions are so strong that a single individual can’t undermine them, telling the New York Times (sic): “As much of a stink as (Trump) made that the election fraud in Jan. 6 and all this stuff, he still walked out the door.”
As Chris Cillizza writes, you could call January 6th—and more importantly, the concerted campaign of electoral subversion that led up to it—just a stink. Or, “You could also call it an armed insurrection on the US Capitol with the express purpose of delaying the certification of a free and fair election.” Cillizza reminds us how close Trump came to succeeding in that effort, stopped only by the actions of a few. Contrary to the conclusion that “our institutions and democracy are essentially impregnable,” Cillizza writes that he took the exact opposite lesson from that day:
To me, what January 6 proved is that we were one Mike Pence action away from the basic tenets of democracy being totally undermined. (And Pence had plenty of doubts before he did the right thing!). The aftermath of the 2020 election showed me how paper-thin the difference between order and chaos, between democracy and, um, not-democracy really is.
For Sununu to believe that Trump can’t do anything all that bad if he is elected again requires him to ignore ALL of the things the former president has already SAID he will do if he is elected again. Among those proposals:
· A political weaponization of the Justice Department
· A purge in the civil service—aimed at installing more Trump loyalists
· A new Muslim ban
· Retribution against news channels he views as unfriendly to him
The idea of reinstalling someone like that into office solely because he, like you, has an “R” after his name is, to borrow a phrase from Sununu, fucking crazy.
SLIPPERY PEOPLE
There were a couple other little things that came out recently that bear noting.
After getting savagely—and justifiably—mocked for her State of the Union rebuttal, it emerged that tone was the least of Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.)’s issues. The flat-out lie that Republicans will protect IVF didn’t get by me, but now her sensational story of a sex trafficked migrant has turned out to be untrue in several crucial details, including the president it happened under—George W. Bush.
Well, I’ll be.
As some wag put it, it takes a helluva lot of gall to talk about the horrors of sex trafficking and then tell viewers to vote for a convicted sexual predator. It takes even more gall to lie about it. (The Washington Post’s factchecker gave Britt’s version four Pinocchios.)
The truth was exposed by independent journalist Jonathan Katz, demonstrating yet again why a truly free and tenacious press—one not beholden to profits or political pressure—is so crucial, particularly to a democracy under siege.
The other story I want to touch on is Trump’s speech in Rome, Georgia, the heart of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional district, soon after the SOTU.
Look at some tape of Don just four years ago. He was always cuddly as a cactus and charming as an eel, but back then he could at least put a coherent sentence together. His mental decline is howlingly evident. But his awfulness carries on.
Employing his usual talent for projection, Trump railed at Biden for “shouting angrily at America” in “the worst State of the Union speech in history,” describing it as an “angry, dark, hate-filled rant” and the “most divisive, partisan, radical and extreme speech ever delivered by a president in that chamber.” He called Biden “grossly incompetent,” “the worst president in history,” “the most corrupt,” as well as “crooked,” clueless, and “a threat to democracy” who would “weaponize government, weaponize the FBI, weaponize the DOJ,” alleging that “everything (he) touches turns to shit” and that he is “destroying our country,”
That is in fact a highly accurate description of a recent president, but that president is not Joe Biden.
And then he mocked Joe’s stutter.
Here’s John Hendrickson in The Atlantic:
More than Trump’s ugly taunt, one thing stands out to me about these moments: the sound of Trump’s supporters laughing right along with him. This is a building block of Trumpism. The man at the top gives his followers permission to be the worst version of themselves.
I spent some time in that part of north Georgia, and lived for quite a few years south of there, in Columbus. (Athens it ain’t.) But the people there are like the people everywhere: good, bad, and everything in between. The self-selecting batch that showed up for a Trump rally aren’t a representative sample, and undoubtedly skew toward the middle of that spaghetti western triptych. But like Nikki and Chris and even Mitch (at least at the beginning of his loathsome career), there are plenty of people who might otherwise be constrained by longstanding norms, including common decency, who have gone over to the dark side after Trump opened the door and beckoned them in.
Let’s give Hendrickson—a stutterer himself—the last word, or at least next to last:
Trump may be among the most famous and powerful people in modern history, but he remains a small-minded bully. He mocks Biden’s disability because he believes the voters will reward him for it—that there is more to be gained than lost by dehumanizing his rival and the millions of other Americans who stutter, or who go through life managing other disorders and disabilities. I would like to believe that more people are repulsed than entertained, and that Trump has made a grave miscalculation. We have eight more months of this until we find out.
And the Republican Party has welcomed this cretin into the house and given him the keys.
***********
Photos, clockwise from top left: Aspiring Trump running mate Nikki Haley; future Fox contributor Chris Sununu; an American yardbird aspiring not to wind up on the menu at Popeye’s; and a fella on his way to join Joe McCarthy and Strom Thurmond in the ninth circle of Hell.
Credits: McConnell: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters; Haley: Reuters; Sununu: Chris Cillizza/Substack; Chicken: selfie
Thanks for catching that, Julie—fixed!!
Sununu is the Governor of NH.