This enforcement action is happening because the Trump people and the Fox people and most of the people in the upper echelons of the party understand: the only way to bring Trump down, to end his political career, is if Republicans turn against him.
As long as they stay unified, no matter what he does, no matter how abhorrent, or how dangerous, or how criminal, or how vile, no matter how much of a threat he is to the nation, if they all band together, then in a polarized landscape, they can basically keep him afloat and make it essentially a coin toss.
That is why they dressed up like him during the trial and rushed to debase themselves in cringe-inducing fashion on any live TV camera they can find.
[snip]
There have only been two times in Trump’s political career where that dynamic of Republican unanimity has broken, where Trump was near political death.
One was in the aftermath of January 6, the violent assault on the Capitol that he stirred up, when everyone was criticizing him, when the blood was still on the floor of the Capitol including Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy. Remember that? Trump’s approval rating dropped below 40%, about the lowest level it reached. Mitch McConnell was testing the waters for a vote for an impeachment conviction.
If it had not been for that man, Mitch McConnell’s abject, enduringly pathetic cowardice and McCarthy’s relentless quest to have the third shortest speakership in history — not to mention the legitimate fear Republican senators had for their families about violence — we wouldn’t have this issue now. They could have just voted to convict him and bar him from future office. Done.
Ironically enough, the other time — the other sort of near political death experience — was in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape. And just about every elected Republican tried to distance themselves and criticize him. Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus was even considering how to get him off of the ticket.
But Trump managed to hold it together, due in no small part to the fact that right at that moment, he got a guy named Michael Cohen, his lawyer, to pay to keep the porn star from talking. And so the Republicans never heard about that story, nor did the public, which could have been the political death blow.
The lesson he learned is if you enforce this totalitarian unanimity, you can keep chugging along.
Hayes and Wheeler seem to be in agreement with a false idea spread by many establishment journalists and Democratic politicians: that the Republican Party is full of men and women of fine character who could be a responsible part of American governance if it weren't for that awful Trump fellow, a monster most Republicans secretly hate and would love to be rid of. Regrettably, these fine citizens are also cowards: They want to do the right thing, but they don't have the backbone. If they'd summoned up some courage in the past, they could have ended Trumpism swiftly -- and they could do it right now if they had sufficiently stiff spines.
But they don't want to do the right thing. They want to do whatever will win them elections. They considered dumping Trump after the Access Hollywood tape was released, but only because they thought he might lose in a landslide and drag other Republicans down with him. But because millions of Americans had watched Trump on TV for years and though he was a good guy, he was never "near political death" in this scandal. Also, Wikileaks immediately published the stolen John Podesta emails and Trump apologized. End of crisis. (It was never a moral crisis for Republicans.)
They could have voted to convict in Trump's second impeachment trial, which would have resulted in "disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" for Trump. But that would have ended the career of every Republican senator who voted to convict, with maybe one or two exceptions. More important, it would have destroyed the Republican Party. While it's true that not every Trump-voting Republican is a MAGA zealot, MAGA zealots are a massive voter bloc, and they would have either defected to a new Trumpist party or fought a civil war against the Trump-purging GOP mainstream. If a conviction in his impeachment trial really barred Trump from running again, a Trump surrogate promising vengeance -- Don Junior, Mike Flynn, Matt Gaetz -- would have swiftly won the loyalty of these voters, either within the GOP or outside it. This post-Trump Trumpist party or movement would have done serious damage to the GOP.
This is what Mitch McConnell was afraid of -- that he could use the Constitution to end the political career of Trump, but Trumpism would survive. So of course most Senate Republicans voted to acquit.
It should have been more costly for Republicans to stick with Trump than to dump him. But Democrats didn't say, as often as possible, that January 6 revealed a shocking level of rot that infested the entire Republican Party. Instead, Democrats celebrated state-level Republicans who merely did their jobs by certifying honest election results. They praised Mike Pence just for doing what he was constitutionally mandated to do on January 6. And when they held hearings, they gave most of the spotlight to a Republican, Liz Cheney -- do you even remember which Democrat actually chaired that committee? Do you remember anything he said or did during the hearings? So you can't blame the rest of the Republican Party for thinking that they weren't to get any of the stench of January 6 on themselves, and thus it wasn't necessary for them to distance themselves from Trump.
And Trump himself always bounces back, because millions of Americans think the system doesn't work for them and Trump is a bomb-thrower who wants to challenge the system on their behalf. That's where we are now. Trump is leading in the swing states and is likely to win in November unless something significant changes in the presidential race. If it seemed as if he might drag down the rest of the GOP, he'd be vulnerable within his party. But that's not the case, so Republicans are happy to let him lead. There's nothing totalitarian or mob-like about it -- they've calculated the odds, and their electoral prospects look fairly good with Trump as their leader. That's all they care about. Why would they start a civil war within their party five months before an election when victory -- the only thing they care about -- is within reach if they don't? What's "totalitarian" about mutually agreeing that they're holding a pretty good hand?
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