For the past eight years, many of us have been waiting on Republicans to find the intestinal fortitude to stand up to Donald Trump. For the past eight years, we have seen glimmers of hope here and there, but we’ve been frequently disappointed.
Republicans who stood in front of the Trump Train were either drummed out of the party, packed off to early (or not-so-early in some cases) retirement, or coopted into the fold. I noticed a long time ago that people rarely go just a little bit trumpy. Going trumpy is often like a complete personality change a la “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and it’s rare to come back. But once again, I’ve seen some glimmers of hope in the weeks since Donald Trump became president-elect.
For starters, the rumblings from Republicans about Matt Gaetz as attorney-general eventually persuaded Gaetz to withdraw from consideration. I guess he’s no RFKJR if he runs at the sound of a few harrumphs.
More serious for Trump is the growing number of people who supported him over Biden yet are now a bit nonplussed that Trump seems to be planning to do all the dastardly and inane things that he said he would do.
Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal seems to be one of these people. In a recent op-ed, Strassel complains about RFKJR, writing, “No insider believes this is a heartfelt pick. Even political naïfs understand what happened: This agreement was entirely transactional.”
Strassel believes Republican senators should “rescue” Trump from his bad choice but laments that “Senate Republicans are playing monkey-see-monkey-do to an extent that even Mr. Trump must be exasperated.”
“Nearly every GOP senator looks at Mr. Kennedy with wincing concern—knowing the havoc the anticapitalistic big-government regulator can and will wreak on a Trump agenda,” Strassel continues, “Yet no one steps up to save the president. If Joe Biden chose Hulk Hogan to be Treasury Secretary, does anyone think Democrats would have let him step into that trap? But so desperate right now are Republicans to nod along that they are abdicating the real job of advice and consent—and protection.”
I can guarantee that Trump is not exasperated by Republican spinelessness. The obsequiousness that Strassel has identified is something that Trump has cultivated for most of a decade. He doesn’t want people with the chutzpah to stand up to him when he’s wrong. He wants yes men who, when told to jump, will ask how high as they leave the ground. This is exactly what many of us warned about in the years before the election.
Not everyone has had the awakening that Strassel is experiencing, but I have seen signs of life from Mitch McConnell. When the Senate reconvenes, McConnell will pass the Majority Leader’s gavel to John Thune (R-SD). Thune’s election as Majority Leader is somewhat of a defeat for Trump since he is from the more traditional wing of the party and not as trumpy as Florida’s Rick Scott, one of the other likely contenders.
It may be that McConnell’s return to the relative anonymity of the backbench has made him more comfortable speaking his mind or that he is more willing to expose Republican fault lines now that the Democrats have been defeated, but McConnell has taken direct opposition to Trump policy recently on a couple of occasions.
First, McConnell fired a shot across RFK, JR.’s bow with a warning against undermining faith in vaccines. As reported by the AP, McConnell said in a statement, “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous, Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”
McConnell specifically defended the polio vaccine, which was invented by Jonas Salk in the 1950s. Before the vaccine, polio killed thousands (fewer than COVID-19 during the pandemic, I’ll note) every year and left many others crippled or in iron lungs. McConnell survived polio when he was two years old, but the disease still has no cure. Polio cases dropped sharply after the vaccine was introduced and there have been no reported cases in the US since 1998.
RFK, Jr.’s position on the polio vaccine has been inconsistent. He has said that he supports the vaccine but has also specifically questioned its safety and said, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.”
A few days after issuing the vaccine statement, McConnell authored an article in “Foreign Affairs” (which is not a magazine for men looking to hook up with international women despite how it sounds) defending American involvement in Ukraine and the Middle East. McConnell identifies China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea (the same countries that I noted in October comprised a new Axis of Evil) as “adversaries” to the US and warned against isolationism, calls to “give up on American primacy,” and the strategy of pivoting away from Europe and the Middle East.
McConnell convincingly argues that the world needs American “hard power” to preserve the peace and that defending Ukraine is part and parcel of resisting China. When America engages in isolationist navel-gazing, strongmen run amok and the world becomes a more dangerous place.
As McConnell puts it, “Standing up to China will require Trump to reject the myopic advice that he prioritize that challenge by abandoning Ukraine. A Russian victory would not only damage the United States’ interest in European security and increase U.S. military requirements in Europe; it would also compound the threats from China, Iran, and North Korea.”
The problem for Strassel and McConnell is that they are vestiges of a conservative party that no longer exists. This is evident if we look at public opinion polling of Republican voters.
When it comes to vaccines, Gallup reports that Americans are sharply more skeptical of childhood vaccinations than they used to be. This increased skepticism is driven mostly by Republicans. The share of Republicans who consider childhood vaccination important has plummeted 18 points since 2019. There can be no doubt that this is a reaction to the scaremongering about COVID vaccines, which has now spread to other drugs.
As you might expect, polling regarding RFKJR’s nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services reflects the Republican skepticism about vaccines. A new survey from the Democrat-leaning groups Protect Our Care and Data for Progress found that voters overall disapproved of the choice of Kennedy, but 74 percent of Republicans approved.
Likewise, McConnell is out of step with the Trump™ Republican Party on foreign policy. While McConnell’s view is still popular among Americans at large, it is no longer the view of a majority of Republicans. Only about a third of Republicans support continued aid to Ukraine and Republican support for an active role in world affairs was falling even while Trump was in office during his first term. (The Chicago Council Survey does show a slight rebound in July 2024.)
And let’s not forget tariffs. McConnell hasn’t mentioned them lately, but he did criticize Trump’s trade policies back in September. These days Republicans overwhelmingly favor a host of anti-trade ideas such as imposing reciprocal tariffs equal to what other countries impose on US goods (85 percent support per YouGov), banning imports of “essential goods” from China (77 percent), and imposing a 60-percent tariff on Chinese imports (72 percent). The free-trade days of the Republican Party are over.
Some Republicans may be waking up to the reality that Donald Trump is not going to usher in a conservative utopia. He’s not even going to usher in an era of conservative competency. He’s going to usher in a dumpster fire ensconced in a train wreck.
McConnell has probably been awake to Trump’s problems for quite a while. I’m not so sure about Strassel. Either way, they and others need to realize that placing party over country and ideology has resulted in a party that no longer resembles them.
The pair and their peers in politics and the conservative media are part of the reason that America has to deal with four more years of Trump. They continually underestimated The Former Guy’s uncanny ability to survive political scandals and bad behavior. They assumed that any Republican, even Trump, was better than any Democrat. They may be experiencing the onset of buyer’s remorse now, but it’s too late to change the fact that the country will be in Trump’s hands for the next four years.
What they can do, however, is to realize that Republicans won’t stop Trump. If they want to limit the damage that Trump does in his second term, Trump-skeptical conservatives are going to have to make common cause with moderate Democrats. America desperately needs a bipartisan coalition of the sane to marginalize both radical fringes. To do that, they must put party aside. The Republican Party is so intertwined with Trump that making Trump lose on any issue is going to be perceived as Democrats winning.
The conundrum is that winning is everything to Trump, and if Republicans save him from himself, he isn’t winning. It’s a Catch-22 for Trump and the GOP which probably means that Trump will get his way on most issues that can’t be blocked by congressional Democrats.
It’s a Catch-22 for Trump and the GOP which probably means that Trump will get his way on most issues that can’t be blocked by congressional Democrats.
How easily pushed are congressional Democrats?
I know of at least a couple of squishes who have offered public support for Trumpy stuff.
Pelosi was the best g-darn whip the Dems ever had.
She demonstrated that she’s capable of getting Dems in line just the other day with the AOC/Cannolly thing… Can she hold onto that for another couple of years? Or four?Report
Is it too soon for I Told You So?
Thoughts and prayers.Report
I’m just relieved that it’s not DeSantis.
Aren’t you?Report
Not really.Report
Well, given that he was even worse than Trump, imagine what the essays we’d be writing under those circumstances.
“Even though the sweetness of DeSantis beating Trump was delightful on the tongue, we’re now settling into the bitterness of his victory as it reaches our bellies. Say what you will about Donald Trump, but at least he wasn’t an effective Nazi. We’re now cursed with an Adolf Hitler who not only commands respect from Republicans, but from Democrats as well. A bipartisan National Socialism that everyone can get on board… if not the trains with the first class cars, the trains going to the death camps.”Report
DeSantis is “worse” in that he actually knows and cares how government works. So do many of the sycophants Trump has nominated for various things.Report
I am glad it’s not DeSantis, now, though it’s possible DeSantis would have viscously lost to Harris. But it’s also utterly irrelevant. DeSantis never came close and that fault for that lies entirely, totally, and completely with the right and right wing voters.
This reminds me a lot of your “Don’t you wish Romney had won?” lines. No. I don’t wish Romney had won. I’m not moved by the “Vote for this plutocratic vulture capitalist robot or else the GOP will go nuts” line of reasoning.Report
Eh, out of Trump/Harris/DeSantis, I see DeSantis as the closest thing to an actual human being (despite being a politician) capable of being a half-decent leader of the executive branch.
I mean, he’s someone that I’d only compare to Hitler because he was a generic republican. Not because of anything else about the guy.
The people who say that DeSantis would be worse than Trump despite comparing Trump to Hitler are…
Well, there’s this thing about touching grass that the kids are saying.Report
Really? DeSantis? Well it’s an amusing posture I’ll grant but considering how DeSantis ran his campaign I am puzzled how you could make the case that he’d be a half-decent leader of the executive branch. I mean “I’ll do every awful thing Trump says he wants to do but I will actually do it instead of flailing around in my own excrement” is a form of competence, I grant, but I don’t see it as being closer to being a human being. Trump after all, can point at being Trump as an excuse. DeSantis doesn’t have that.Report
ok, what Republican would you consider acceptable
Death Is Not An Option, pick one. yes I know you’d rather literally a dog turd than any Republican.Report
Well, it being stipulated that as a yellow dog Democrat I’d happily pick a dog turd for the office over a Republican, I’d consider Nikki Haley to be a more conventional and, thus, a more conventionally “tolerable” Republican than either Trump or DeSantis. Likewise Larry Hogan.
I could be cute and say Liz Cheney but that’d be disingenuous since I don’t believe any neocon should ever be allowed near the executive office again on overwhelming foreign policy grounds. Haley is, of course, neocon-ish herself but it’s not like I have a wealth of Republican options to choose from and I’m trying to take the question seriously.
And, heck, to give Romneybot his due: if I could press a button and swap Trump out with Mitt Romney I’d do so in a flat second with nary a second thought.
And, just to reiterate, if there was a button to swap out Trump for an inert satchel of dog excrement I’d hit it far more readily than I would one for Romney.Report
Larry Hogan I could probably live with. Haley is a no from me because of her anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant stances. Anyone right of her is even worse.Report
I’d look to how Florida is governed and how it’s done under his executorship.
Growth, economy, jobs, crime… that stuff.Report
Growth, economy, jobs, crime… that stuff.
The Democrats would like a word.Report
Not the ones in California.
They recalled progressive DAs and passed an initiative that made shoplifting illegal again.Report
There are many many more Democrats than the ones that run California and New York. Also you left out insurance from your analysis of Florida which is akin to saying Hiroshima was a lovely place in ’45 if you don’t pay attention to radioactive fallout.Report
I think DeSantis would suck from a public policy perspective and I’d never vote for him but I’ll bite and say I don’t think he would pose the unique dangers of Trump. Hard to see him attempting some sort of 1/6 type incident or abusing the power of the office beyond what we’ve come to expect over the past few decades. So bad but normal bad.Report
Just a normal Romney-level Hitler.Report
I challenge you to find any instance at OT of me comparing any living American politician to the famed Austrian. Maybe you’ll surprise me but I don’t think you can.
With respect to Trump I’ve long said Berlusconi or maybe some kind of Peronist from Latin America were the more appropriate parallel.Report
Pardon me. *I* would compare him to a normal Hitler and not a Trumpian Ultra-Hitler.
Hitler as Theological Concept.Report
This is hard because it’s outside of my theological framework. I think most Republicans are mostly cynical runners of interference for plutocrats plus a rump of culture warriors running the gambit of cynical and mean spirited to just kind of dumb. To play off Walter Sobchak, in order to treat them as National Socialists, I’d need to be convinced they had an ethos. Or at least more of one than the current thing that has their own idiotic media apparatus yanking them around by the balls.Report
As far as I can tell, it’s just used to communicate distaste without anything deeper than that. When the vibe changes, Hitler is welcomed with open arms.
See, for example, how Dick Cheney pulled a Wernher von Braun.Report
It’s funny because right up until 1/6 I thought there was much more of a ‘there’ with the Bush-Cheney axis than with Trump. They at least had something like a vision, even if the top of the ticket wasn’t bright enough to fully appreciate how radical it was. I remember people (not normal people but like people at the university food co-op) speculating that maybe Bush would lose the election to John Kerry then try to stay in power with some kind of game of constitutional chicken, signed off on by SCOTUS ‘just like the 2000 election.’ But then he left without a fuss and of course Obama picked up a number of the balls he left and kept walking with them.
But anyway I’m too principled to start doing the Hitler comparisons with anything happening today. If the past is a different country when we talk about the US then it’s a different planet when we talk about that guy.Report
Again, I appreciate the writing, but continue to be completely baffled by posts suggesting there is some sort of corrective or change in the Republican party towards a guy they elected a mere 6 weeks ago, who dominated the primary to the point he barely even had to contest it, and with whom virtually all current Republican office holders of any significance have fallen in line. The GOP is his party. If you are in the GOP, he is your man, and he has yet to actually be sworn into office. What are we even talking about?Report
McConnell was also SURE that he didn’t need to convict in the January 6th impeachment because the courts would. I am unconvinced this is anything that amounts to anything.Report
I have no idea.
Perhaps it’s because the current POTUS is somewhere hidden away and no one knows who is actually running the executive branch, but the world is reacting as if Trump took office the day after the election. It certainly does *feel* like he did.
Maybe recency bias, but I don’t recall a transition quite like this one. We are in a very weird place.Report
I agree that Biden has been and remains the most invisible president I can recall, and it has made the transition stranger.
Still, not really seeing the rebellion or buyer’s remorse David has suggested a couple of times now. If anything it’s just a continuation of Trump season 1, where, charitably speaking, he defies the conventional wisdom about decorum and what’s normal.
Sometimes it works out and he gets his way, sometimes he doesn’t, but I don’t see any sign of his party getting ready to oppose him on anything serious.
My suspicion is that where they frustrate him it will be because of the chaos in their Congressional delegation, and the slim majority, not because they’re trying to clip Trump’s wings.Report
David conflates minor criticism with buyer’s remorse. It’s wishful thinking.
Trump voters will be remorseful when they have an actual reason to be.Report
I actually agree with this. the billionaire class has thrown in with him significantly because they believe he can be manipulated into deregulation. ordinary citizens have thrown in with him because he has given them people to blame for their perceived ills, and as long a she hurts those people as much or more then they get hurt, they will stand by him.Report
We have the same view on the inside.Report
It’s just wishful thinking, alas.Report
Delusional would be a better word.Report
On the part of Republican political actors? Probably. But on the part of our resident writers? No I think it’s just wishful thinking.Report
This hints that the GOP is willing to do things – so long as no one knows about it:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/18/politics/matt-gaetz-ethics-report-committee/index.htmlReport
Republicans in Congress seem to be willing to shut down the government for no reason other than Trump is opposed to the continuing resolution. I’d say that the Republicans are not waking up.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trump-opposes-funding-bill-pushing-government-closer-shutdown-rcna184745Report
One thing that Trumpist voters are telling the Republicans in congress is that they shouldn’t be afraid. “What are they going to do? Compare you to Hitler?”Report
So what happens? Johnson brings the CR, including some Democratic priorities, to the floor and passes it with Dem votes and a handful of Republicans who are retired come Jan 3? Johnson already has to take his chances with being voted Speaker in the new Congress. Doesn’t seem like he has much to lose.Report
It’d be interesting to see who the GOP tries to scrape up to be Speaker if Johnson gets the boot.Report
So I googled: “does the speaker of the house have to be a member of congress”
And the answer came up:
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Boebert or MTG.Report
We will know by the 20th. Johnson is out as speaker if this happens. Johnson is out if it does not happen.Report
We are all preparing to sit down for a couple of weeks minimum. Thankfully the last time this happened Congress felt bad enough to pass a law saying we’d all get back paid, but still.
Worth remembering that the Weather Service, FBI (and other Law Enforcement), and FEMA will be working without pay during this period.Report