The
GOP whitewashing of the Trump stain has quietly begun
Opinion by
Columnist
Dec. 21, 2020 at 9:34 a.m. CST
Listen closely, and
you can already discern how leading Republicans will attempt to expunge the
massive black stain of Trumpism from their party.
Prepare for a set of
rhetorical tricks. Republicans will portray President Trump’s degradations as a
matter of tone and personal conduct. They will depict themselves as
having been discomfited bystanders to his ugly comportment. And they will
carefully sever their own governing ideology from any role in the legacies of
destruction he unleashed on the nation.
The embryo of this
effort can be found in this big New York Times piece about GOP
maneuvering over Trump’s rage about his loss. Trump is MIA as president, mostly
ignoring the vaccine rollout and refusing to condemn Russia’s massive
cyberattack, instead focusing on overturning the election.
But, the Times
reports, some Republicans profess to see an “upside” in Trump’s disinterest in
specifics and in his coming absence:
They believe the
president’s departure might allow Republicans to return to some of the themes
that proved effective in down-ballot races last month, while also depriving
Democrats of their most dependable boogeyman.
Going forward,
Republicans believe Trump’s “focus will never linger on one matter for long,”
the Times notes, and they can get back to elevating the “perceived excesses of
the left”:
“When Trump is no
longer in office there’s going to be less focus on personality and ‘What did he
tweet today, what did he say today?’” predicted Senator John Cornyn of Texas,
adding, hopefully, that Democrats would soon struggle with internal divisions
in a “Tea Party moment” akin to what Republicans faced a decade ago.
Senator Lindsey
Graham of South Carolina (LADY LINDSEY IS A COMPLICIT PIG AND HYPOCRITE) was
even more succinct, arguing that the Democrats’ left wing would alienate
moderate voters.
“Our problem is tone,
their problem is policy,” Mr. Graham said of the two parties.
“We’ve both got to
overcome problems, but I like our chances better because we can act better and
it’s harder for them to legislate differently.”
Spot the trick?
Cornyn and Graham are professing relief that we won’t have to focus on Trump’s
“tweets” and his “tone” anymore. This is supposed to look as if Republicans are
criticizing Trump’s excesses while wistfully wanting to get back to substantive
arguments over the nation’s direction with “the left.” You can almost see them
admiring their halos in the mirror.
But no one should be
fooled by this game, especially when you hear a lot more of it. Trump’s
destruction went far beyond tone, and it continues right now. Many Republicans
were active collaborators in much of that destruction. And the destructive
influence of both that collaboration and the role of their ideology in
facilitating it will continue for the foreseeable future.
Trump plays footsie
with ‘martial law’
We just learned from
the Times that Trump privately asked advisers about a
supporter’s suggestion that martial law be imposed to “rerun” the election.
Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani pushed for the state to seize voting machines
as part of his effort to invalidate countless votes.
Those ideas were shot
down. But the damage from Trump’s active efforts to overturn the election is
ongoing. As Rosie Gray’s reporting demonstrates, Trump is
potentially creating a mass of followers behind the idea that election outcomes
are only legitimate when they get their way, and that overturning hated results
is not just acceptable, but is correct.
Cornyn and his ilk
will soon piously insist Trump’s electoral subversion amounted to a few
“tweets.” They will pretend they merely wanted to let Trump and his voters down
easy, because Trump was “in denial” and his voters “actually believed” Trump
won, leaving them in a “difficult” spot.
But once again, Trump
and his supporters do not actually believe Joe Biden didn’t
win. They want to invalidate a legitimate election, because
they lost it. As Tom Nichols says, it’s time to stop
treating these “feelings” as vaguely legitimate. These folks are angry not that
democracy failed, but that it worked, and they claim the right to reverse this.
That is what many
Republicans actively validated, by backing up Trump in his refusal to admit his
loss for weeks. Though there were notable exceptions, very few condemned his actual tactic of trying to
get state legislatures to subvert millions of votes, which will be attempted
again.
We simply don’t know
how vast the damage will prove in the future, now that millions have bought
into this understanding. Republicans actively collaborated in creating the
conditions for this.
Insulating right-wing
ideology
Meanwhile, Congress
has reached a deal for a $900 billion stimulus package. That’s great, but it
comes only as GOP leaders fear losing the Georgia
runoffs,
and after months of resisting stimulus
checks. All this strongly suggests
Republicans will do little to alleviate economic misery next year.
Conservatives can
claim opposition to more government assistance next year on grounds of
principle, of course. But the suddenly discovered concern about deficits that
will fake-justify this is pure fraudulence.
It is true that
Democratic governors posted serious virus-related failures. But as Brian Beutler points out, conservative
Republican disdain for government action — in the face of coronavirus and the
resulting economic calamity — will be in no small part responsible for the
extensive and continuing national damage we’ll see next year.
Trump added his own species of malignant illiberalism
to this mix,
making it even more destructive. But as Beutler notes, any reckoning with this
“catastrophe” must assign a central role to “right-wing ideology.”
If vaccine
distribution goes well, and the economy bounces back, Republicans eyeing the
2022 midterms will need to instill mass amnesia about the wreckage unleashed in
part by their ideology, and by the still-undertheorized fact that it so easily
melded with Trump’s toxic illiberalism to create one of the biggest governing
disasters in modern times.
We know how they’ll
do this. As the Times piece notes, Republicans want to
get past Trump, to get back to attacking “the most extreme ideas on the left.”
This is a polite way of saying that Republicans want to get back to
conventional GOP plutocratic economic orthodoxy, advanced under cover of fictions about
Democratic extremism.
And as Republicans
are already showing, they will also do this by claiming Trump’s degradations
were merely about “tweets” and “tone.”