It was a weird scene: Trump cabinet members speaking up, one by one, to offer effusive, groveling praise to their boss. Even if the praise had been justified (in fact, Trump has achieved amazingly little), it was deeply un-American — the kind of thing you would expect to see in an authoritarian regime, not a republic where leaders are supposed to pretend to be humble servants of the people.
But it was of a piece with everything else we’ve been seeing, not just from Trump — who doesn’t have a democratic bone in his body — but from Republicans, who have so far showed themselves willing to accept any and all abuses of power, including almost comical levels of financial self-dealing. So this isn’t just a Trump story; it’s about what happened to the GOP.
I don’t have a full explanation. But surely a starting point is the realization that while America as a whole isn’t an authoritarian regime — yet — the modern Republican party in many ways is. That is, once you’ve made the decision to become Republican, you find yourself living in your own private Pyongyang.
I mean this in a couple of senses. One is that for the great majority of Congressional Republicans, loyalty to party is all that matters for their political futures. As this chart from Nate Silver shows, there are now very few swing districts, in which a Republican can lose short of a political earthquake;
This is true of Democrats too, but the Democratic party is a field of contending interest groups, while the GOP is monolithic. So if you’re a Republican politician, you care about following the party line — full stop.
But mightn’t even Republican voters turn on you if you seem too slavish to an obviously corrupt leadership? Well, where would those voters get such an idea? For all practical purposes, Republican primary voters get their news from wholly partisan media, which quite simply present a picture of the world that bears no resemblance to what independent sources are saying. Even though most Republicans in DC probably know better, their self-interest says to pretend to believe the official line.
So if you’re Representative Bomfog from a red state, your entire career depends on being an apparatchik willing to do and say anything the regime demands. Suggestions that the president’s men, and maybe the man himself, is in collusion with a foreign power? Fake news! Firing the FBI director in an obvious obstruction of justice? Let’s make excuses! Analyses suggesting that your bill will cause mass suffering? Never mind. Party loyalty is all — even if it demands humiliating displays of obsequious deference.
This is why I don’t trust claims that firing Mueller would cross some kind of red line. All indications are that there is no line.
The one thing that might cause Rs to turn on Trump would be the more or less certain prospect of a wave election so massive that even very safe seats get lost. And at the rate things are going, that could happen. But if it does, it will be nothing like a normal political process; it will be more like a revolution within the GOP, a regime change that would shatter the party establishment.
Here’s hoping.