For a brief moment in January 2021, it was possible to imagine that Donald Trump’s days at the apex of American politics were over.
After all, the marriage between Trump and the Republican Party had always been one of convenience. And by the winter of 2021, the latter no longer had much use for the former. Trump had just cost the GOP a winnable election, as his historic unpopularity overwhelmed the advantages of incumbency. He’d then proceeded to put the American republic — and, more relevantly, Republican elites — in mortal danger. By January 6, the GOP had already secured its side of Trump’s Faustian bargain: its promised tax cuts and Supreme Court seats. Now the party could comfortably kick its authoritarian interloper to the curb.
Shortly after the Capitol riot, Mitch McConnell attempted to do just that, declaring Trump personally responsible for an assault on “the rule of law” in the United States, saying from the Senate floor, “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”
Since then, Trump helped cost Republicans multiple Senate races, got himself held civilly liable for sexual assault and indicted four times, facing 91 criminal charges — and became the GOP’s most likely 2024 presidential nominee. As of this writing, Trump leads his closest primary rival by nearly 50 points in national polls and by 34 points in Iowa.
That an aspiring authoritarian is also the standard-bearer of a major political party is obviously an unfortunate turn of events for democracy. But it’s also a strategic setback for the GOP: Despite her low name recognition, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley polls better against Joe Biden than Trump does. Given the Democratic president’s dismal approval rating and advanced age, a minimally normal-seeming Republican nominee might well win November’s election in a landslide. Trump’s singular toxicity is Biden’s lifeline. Or so the president’s campaign seems to believe.
Nevertheless, judging by the polls, Trump is in a stronger position to win the presidency in November than he was at this time in 2016. And a Trump presidency has never been a more alarming prospect than it is today. In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot, Trump disavowed the mob that had violently interrupted Congress’s tally of Electoral College votes. Now, he lionizes the January 6 insurrectionists as “political prisoners.”
Trump entered office in 2017 as a political neophyte with scant understanding of the executive branch. Today, he boasts a comprehensive plan for bending the administrative state to his will. In recent years, right-wing think tanks have recruited a cadre of MAGA loyalists ready to staff a Trumpified civil service and developed blueprints for consolidating his power over federal law enforcement. In court, meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers recently argued that the US president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution unless impeached and convicted by Congress. When asked by a judge whether this meant that a president could order the assassination of a political rival and face no criminal repercussions — so long as he persuaded his allies in Congress to block an impeachment — Trump’s attorneys affirmed that this is indeed their understanding of the law.
The GOP’s failure to break free from Trump constitutes a dereliction of its core duties as a political party. Parties exist, among other things, to organize political conflict in a manner conducive to both their own electoral interests and the maintenance of democratic rule. By most accounts, the Republican old guard has no great fondness for the man who executed a hostile takeover of their party, saddled them with daily political headaches during his time in office, and then instigated an insurrection that nearly got some GOP leaders pummeled, if not killed. Yet McConnell and his allies have proven incapable of steering their party in another direction.
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