Spare the Rod and Spoil the President

Rumor has it that Donald Trump is about to become the first thrice-indicted president. Actually, it isn’t so much rumor as reports that Trump’s attorneys have been advised by the Justice Department to expect an indictment related to January 6. The indictment may come as early as Friday.

The road to the January 6 indictments has been a long one, and before the debate shifts to the specific charges, I want to take a moment to remind everyone that if the Republican Party had an ounce of moral courage, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Since before Trump became the party’s nominee in 2016, the GOP has bypassed every one of the numerous opportunities they had to oust Trump.

During the 2016 primaries, Republicans could have unified around a common opposition candidate the way Democrats unified around Biden to freeze out Bernie in 2020. It is difficult to remember now that Trump won the primary in 2016 with only 27 percent of the caucus vote and 45 percent of primary votes. This would have been the easiest time to stop him, but the nonTrump candidates split the nonTrump vote.

The next opportunity was when the “Access Hollywood” scandal broke. Republicans made a calculation that Trump was unlikely to win and that Hillary was worse anyway and most stuck by him.

The “Access Hollywood” moment was a perfect time to dump Trump. Republicans would have seized the moral high ground and likely still won congressional majorities. Hillary’s agenda would have been DOA and a conservative would have been in prime position to win in 2020.

After losing, Trump and MAGA would have been consigned to the trash heap of history. Instead, his fluke win made Republican voters see his victory as divinely inspired and allowed him to attain literal cult status.

Next came the firing of James Comey. It was revealed later that Trump’s cabinet considered using the 25th Amendment to remove him at that point. This was a tougher strategy and would have been very unpopular with the Republican base, which was already starting to lionize Trump. Using the 25th Amendment is tougher than impeaching a president and would have been a nonstarter without the participation of Vice President Pence, who was too loyal for his own good, almost to the end.

The Comey firing led to the Mueller report, which faulted Trump but left the ultimate decision to another Trump loyalist, Attorney General Barr, who whitewashed the findings. The report was damaging but vague enough that Republicans again failed to take action.

Coming on the heels of the Mueller report, however, was the Ukraine whistleblower scandal. Republicans first denied that the whistleblower’s account was accurate and then moved the goalposts by saying Trump’s actions were insufficient to warrant impeachment. Nevertheless, Trump was impeached (rightfully) and Republicans in the Senate rallied to prevent him from being removed from office. I remain convinced that much of MAGA’s hatred of President Zelenskyy and Ukraine is related to the role of Ukraine in Trump’s first impeachment.

Even before impeachment, Republicans started lining up to endorse Donald Trump for a second term. The mad rush to proclaim loyalty to Trump and the decision of several states not to allow challengers to compete against Trump for the Republican nomination was a reflection of both Trump’s popularity within the Republican Party and his weakness as a candidate. It would have been tough to beat Trump in the Republican primary in 2020, but the party made sure that there was no chance it would happen.

In the 2020 election, Republicans almost uniformly supported Trump and preached how much of a boon he was to the conservative cause. They rationalized his bad behavior and excused his abuses of power. After four years of hearing how great Trump was, Republican voters firmly believed it. Trump the inveterate liar was held up as a Christian champion and a beacon of truth.

This set the stage for the post-election events of 2020 and 2021. Donald Trump would not have been able to inspire an insurrection and coup attempt if it hadn’t been for four years of propaganda by gutless Republicans at all levels who, for the most part, remained silent as Trump spread lies about massive fraud and challenged the results of the election if they didn’t actively jump on board.

But at this point, Trump was clearly beyond the control of Republican leaders. In fact, Trump was the Republican leader by this point. The GOP belonged to him and continues to do so.

There was one last opportunity to put Trump out to pasture. In Trump’s second impeachment, Republicans once again rallied to prevent The Soon-To-Be-Former-Guy from being held accountable for his actions. In so doing, they sowed the seeds of their own destruction as Trump promptly mounted a 2024 campaign and became the prohibitive frontrunner. The anointed pick of the nontrumpy (or more accurately, the not-firmly-trumpy) Republican establishment, Ron DeSantis, has been running a distant second and is in deep trouble.

Now, Republicans find themselves in a worse-but-similar position to where Democrats were in 2016. Their nominee is phenomenally unpopular and rather than just being under federal investigation, the Republican candidate is likely to be under two federal and two state indictments. Even though polls look close now, Republicans are likely to face a historic defeat in 2024.

Will this spur Republicans to finally dump Trump and MAGA? Before you answer consider the disappointing results of the 2022 midterms in which MAGA candidates did very poorly. And 2020. And 2018. In other words, I wouldn’t bet on it.

I also wouldn’t bet that an additional federal indictment will cause the party to sour on Trump. If anything, Republicans will argue that the system is corrupt and rally around Dear Leader.

It would have been relatively easy to dump Trump in 2016, but it has gotten harder as Republicans have, wittingly or unwittingly, reinforced his popularity. At this point, Trump won’t be easily removed from the public scene. A conviction risks political unrest even as the Republican Party is shackled to a corpse. A recent Harvard Youth poll found that the younger generation is rejecting Republican talking points and becoming more progressive. This is undoubtedly at least in part a backlash against Trump

In the end, it was Republicans who fought tooth and nail against any and every attempt to hold Trump accountable. And when Trump escaped punishment for one escapade, the next one was inevitably bigger. The lesson he learned was that he was untouchable.

The situation is exactly the same as with a spoiled toddler who never gets a spanking or other correction from his parents. The spoiled child grows up to be a spoiled adult whose crimes get bigger and bigger.

Republicans, Donald Trump is a mess of your own making. You own this.