Ever since he entered the political fray in 2015, Donald Trump has amassed a cult following whose loyalty has been rewarded with lavish praise. At the same time, via tweet, bluster at rallies, and in interviews, he has, like a schoolyard bully who bends the knuckles of others backward to find the point at which they drop to their knees and resign themselves to beta-male status, humiliated anyone who dares to consider himself Republican, conservative, or in the service of the nation rather than a person without expressing total loyalty to him.
We saw it when his cult following heaped opprobrium on Ted Cruz at the 2016 GOP convention for telling the crowd to vote its conscience and quite conspicuously refraining from mention Trump's by name. During primary season, Trump had orchestrated a mockery of Cruz's wife's Heidi's looks, and had floated an outrageous conspiracy theory tying Cruz's father to the JFK assassination. But after the reaction to his convention speech, Cruz fell in line.
Jeff Sessions was humiliated via tweet for months during his attorney-general stint and finally fired. Still, he came back for more abuse, making a pathetic lap-dog commercial in which he donned a MAGA hat when he made a feeble attempt to reclaim his old Alabama Senate seat earlier this year.
The manner in which Rex Tillerson and John Kelly were fired from their positions in the administration was emblematic of the Trump management style. And now Mark Esper joins that list.
The Very Stable Genius, through the crudest means possible, has made either cowards or sycophants of 90 percent of Republicans.
And even in his hour of supremely public humiliation, in which he has to assume the role for which he has always had the ultimate contempt - loser - he still has the party's knuckles bent backwards.
Lots of Republicans would like to speak out about his mortifying I-won-by-a-lot schtick of the last eight days, but they dare not, because the nation's political landscape of the next two years depends on one last race over which the VSG has. great deal of influence:
There are two reasons why most Senate Republicans refuse to acknowledge Joe Biden as president-elect: Georgia and Georgia.
Simply put, the party needs President Donald Trump’s help to clinch two runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5 that will determine the fate of the Senate GOP’s majority. And accepting the presidential results ahead of Trump, a politician driven by loyalty, could put Republicans at odds with the president and his core supporters amid the must-win elections down South.
On Tuesday, most GOP senators continued to support Trump’s legal fights against his electoral losses, despite no evidence of the widespread voting malfeasance that Trump claims has swung tens of thousands of votes to Biden in multiple states. That’s because when the presidential election is finally certified, Republicans hope that Trump will put on his red jersey this winter and help deliver his conservative base for Georgia’s Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.“We need his voters. And he has a tremendous following out there,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota. “Right now, he’s trying to get through the final stages of his election and determine the outcome there. But when that’s all said and done, however it comes out, we want him helping in Georgia.”
And now comes a series of Pentagon firings that has produced the same effect:
There is widespread alarm among congressional Republicans at how President Donald Trump this week abruptly replaced Pentagon leaders with political allies, and sent signals he might do the same in the intelligence community, but for now lawmakers are refraining from overtly criticizing the moves for fear doing so could harm the party's chances of holding onto its two Senate seats in Georgia.
Republicans' response to the ouster of Mark Esper as defense secretary has been noticeably circumspect, especially when compared to the explosion of criticism hurled at Trump when he fired Esper's predecessor, Jim Mattis, two years ago. To date, Republican lawmakers have offered praise for Esper's tenure and little else.
Congressional aides say the anodyne public expressions represent a concerted attempt to self-muzzle, as the political party that prides itself on being strong on national security grapples with its fear of antagonizing an erratic and impulsive lame-duck president while battling to keep control of the Senate.
"They see the extraordinarily high stakes in the Georgia Senate runoffs," American Enterprise Institute congressional expert Norm Ornstein said Wednesday. "Creating a deep internal division in the party right now could jeopardize those seats, and the calculus they've made is that sticking with Trump is a better course of action at this stage."
GOP leaders have set an "unspoken standard," as it was put by one of several congressional Republican aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, not to "rock the boat too much before Georgia."
But the president's decision to replace Defense Department leaders with Trump loyalists - including one person previously deemed too controversial for Senate confirmation - nonetheless has grievously upset most Republican members, the aides explained, particularly as it appears clear that Trump fired Esper in retribution for their policy differences.
Look, the hour is late and those Senate seats are crucial. My last few posts here at LITD have been about that. And Trump enthusiasts are going to be key to securing those victories. And for once, my answer to the question, "Is it worth the price that must be paid to halt the advance of leftism?" my answer is yes. As I say, it's the first time. I never bought the it's-a-binary-choice-so-you-have-to-get-behind-Trump argument. I wrote somebody in on the president line of my ballot in 2016 and again this year. But I understand what Republican legislators have to do here and would not want to see them do otherwise. And it is a matter of standing on principle.
But it makes me want to vomit. Donald Trump has made post-American politics considerably uglier than it had been. He has spent the last five years forcing unpalatable choices on decent people, all in the service of his insatiable thirst for self-glorification.
My message to the Republican Party: After January 5, you don't have to drop to your knees for this grotesque figure anymore. If you do, it's because you have hopelessly abandoned anything you ever claimed to stand for.
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