Oops. We Missed the Exit(s).
The GOP has been heading full speed down the Trump Expressway and refusing to ask for directions.
The once venerable GOP has rendered itself indistinguishable from Trump and Trumpism, and it’s an entirely self-inflicted wound. Republicans have had numerous opportunities to distance themselves from Trump — opportunities, if you will, to take an off-ramp from the Trump Expressway. They’ve sped by all the exits, and they now find themselves in “ride or die” mode.
It started with the 2016 primaries. Well, the Trump era started then, but the GOP had been paving the way for a candidate like Trump for decades before that. Trump picked off Republican presidential hopefuls like ducks in a shooting gallery. One by one, they were blindsided by the way that Donald Trump flouted the norms of campaigning. Every one of his contenders were more qualified for the job of POTUS.
But he was willing — even eager — to eviscerate his fellow primary contenders using any means available. He lied. He insulted their spouses and family members. He infantilized them. In many cases, he attacked their masculinity. He interrupted them during debates. He assigned juvenile nicknames to his contenders.
In short, he was all too happy to wrestle in the mud while his fellow candidates, for the most part, tried to maintain at least a modicum of dignity. If there had been even a single candidate who was willing to take on Trump with the same zeal that he took them on, the nation would be in a very different place today.
The 2016 primary campaign was the first of many Trumpism exit ramps the Republicans failed to take. EXIT 1. Oops. Missed the exit.
From that point forward, Trump was accruing a stockpile of reasons for the GOP to create distance. From lying about his inauguration crowds to his failure to keep his grandiose campaign promises in his first 100 days in office, Republicans had plenty of reasons to hold Trump suspect.
But in August of 2017, Trump gave Republicans a solid reason to swerve toward the next available off ramp, when he infamously defended neo-Nazis at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. To this day, Trump is still claiming he didn’t mean what he said, when he said there were “very fine people on both sides” of that racist, anti-Semitic march. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt, he sure didn’t make any attempt to distance himself from that event, thereby providing tacit encouragement to those whose racism and anti-Semitism were just below the surface.
Where did Republicans stand on this issue? Well, several spoke out against the Unite the Right march itself and against neo-Nazism. But I’ve been unable to identify any prominent Republican who spoke out against Trump and his failure to condemn the events in Charlottesville. EXIT 2. Oops. Missed the next exit.
It’s not that there weren’t any number of potential off ramps between Charlottesville in 2017 and Trump’s first impeachment (yes, we have to specify which one) in 2019-2020, but the impeachment was the most notable opportunity during those years for Republicans to distance themselves from Trump.
The House impeached Trump, but the Republican controlled Senate, despite fully understanding his guilt, basically said, “Not so fast, there, son.” Senate Majority Leader McConnell was savvy enough to understand exactly what Special Counsel Robert Mueller was saying in his report — that Russia had indeed interfered with the election “in sweeping and systematic fashion” — but he chose instead to guide/cajole/coerce his fellow Republican Senators to vote against conviction in the Senate. This was only after he prevented any Democrats from calling witnesses in the Senate impeachment hearings. McConnell claimed that the appropriate “sentencing” would come from voters in the November election. EXIT 3. Oops. Missed yet another exit.
By that time, unfounded right-wing rumblings of election fraud were already resonating among Trump’s base, instigated by Trump himself, despite the fact that the election itself was still nine months away. By the time the Presidential debates began in September of 2020, Trump was already signaling to his most violent supporters that he wanted to remain in office, whether he won the election or not. When given the opportunity during one of the debates to distance himself from the white supremacists who were a substantial part of his base, he instead implored the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” The Proud Boys did just that until he signaled them to act on his behalf. His fellow Republicans stood by, as well. EXIT 4. Oops. We completely ignored that exit.
I hardly need to go into the next potential off ramp — the January 6 insurrection. Oh, how Republicans contorted themselves in order to condemn the violence and the chaos of that day without condemning Trump! EXIT 5. Mega-oops. We could have easily ditched him by the side of the road but we chose not to.
When House Democrats, in waning days of Trump’s term of office, stood on principle and impeached Trump a second time for his encouragement of and participation in the January 6 insurrection, Senate Republicans once again closed ranks and refused to convict Trump. This time, McConnell justified his own obstruction by saying that our Judiciary should be the ones to deal with Trump’s crimes. Republicans promptly started doing everything in their power to obstruct any judicial proceedings that would hold Trump accountable; that obstruction continues to this day. EXIT 6. Oh, forget it. We’re not even gonna bother pretending. We’re all in with Trump.
A few things are clear from all of this kicking the consequences can down the Trump Expressway:
Republicans have known all along that Trump is fatally flawed — corrupt, criminal, even sociopathic.
Republicans have systematically put their self-interests, both individually and as a political party, ahead of what is right for the nation.
It matters little whether this moral and ethical failure is because of their thirst for power or their fear of retribution; the net result is the same.
The Republican party, through its inaction, now owns every dreadful character trait, every treasonous utterance, every felonious act, every misogynistic slight, every phony smile and rage-filled leer that Trump has presented to the nation and the world. He’s all yours.
Stand back and stand by, Diogenes. These days, you won’t find an honest man among the ranks of Republicans.