Tuesday, October 26, 2021

JONATHAN CHAIT: CYNICAL ABOUT REPUBLICANS, BUT NOT CYNICAL ENOUGH

I generally admire Jonathan Chait's posts about the depravity of Donald Trump and the party that's in thrall to him, but this one seems a bit off:
If Terry McAuliffe holds on to defeat Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia governor’s race, a large number of Republicans will blame Donald Trump. McAuliffe has assiduously tied Youngkin to Trump. Youngkin has followed a careful strategy of appealing to both Trump cultists and moderates. Should he lose, it would be a proof point that blue-state Republicans can’t keep a foot in both camps. They would have to denounce the former president more forcefully to gain the credibility they need to win statewide office, a step that would erode Trump’s influence over the party.

So a McAuliffe win would be a devastating blow for Trump’s power base within the Republican Party.
But it won't "be a devastating blow for Trump’s power base within the Republican Party." Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points last year, so unless Youngkin loses by that much or more, Trump and his fan base will take the narrowed margin as a sign of victory (while also claiming -- it's a knee-jerk reaction by now -- that Youngkin would have won if the election wasn't rigged). The masinstream media will agree.


The Republicans who secretly despise Trump -- we're regularly told there's an abundance of them -- might quietly grumble about Trump's influence on the outcome to a few reporters from Politico or The New York Times. But what does it matter? Republicans don't need to win very many races in blue states to regain power. They certainly don't need to win in blue states at all to regain the Senate or the White House. So while a McAuliffe victory would have some impact on the way wary Republicans feel about Trump, the most that might result is more grumbling from Republicans about "looking to the future." That won't diminish Trump's standing with the party base at all.

Later in the post, Chait offers a history of the aftermath of January 6 that seems rather revisionist:
At first the insurrection so revolted them they briefly set out to make a permanent break that would prevent Trump from running again. Then they lost their nerve but told themselves they would isolate him from the party and eliminate his power without holding an impeachment vote. Then they simply gave up on that plan altogether.
Really? It seems to me that a number of them condemned him hoping the story would go away after that -- with very few exceptions, Republicans weren't trying to drive Trump from public life at all. And maybe they "told themselves they would isolate him from the party and eliminate his power without holding an impeachment vote," but if so, I don't see any evidence of it. I don't think they "lost their nerve." I think they never intended to "isolate him from the party and eliminate his power" at all -- a certain percentage of them simply believed that they needed to issue pro forma condemnations of him, after which they hoped they could just back to bashing and owning the libs again. Which is what they proceeded to do as soon as Democrats went ahead with the impeachment.

I know it's hard to be sufficiently cynical about Republicans, but Chait usually manages. This time, he wasn't cynical enough.

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