gracchusdixit

When, in the space of a single week, a former Republican President, George W. Bush, and three distinguished Republican Senators, John McCain, Bob Corker, and Jeff Flake, all suggested or, in the cases of Corker and Flake, stated flat out that Donald Trump is unfit to be president and a danger to the nation, the media proclaimed that a “civil war” had erupted within the Republican Party.  We were told that Bush, McCain, Corker, and Flake were merely stating for public consumption what countless other Republicans were thinking or saying behind Trump’s back.  It was also suggested that a metaphorical dam had broken; that it was only a matter of time before other Republicans would join the chorus of rebuke and repudiation.

Don’t hold your breath.

Few of the so-called establishment Republicans who purportedly deplore Trump in private have thus far uttered a peep in public.  Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and the rest of what passes for Republican “leadership” these days have chosen either to stand mute or to stand by their man.

Two reasons are generally invoked to explain or excuse this cowardice and complicity.

The first is that Republican legislators fear Trump’s wrath on Twitter or the rage of his rabid and feral “base,” almost all of whom say to pollsters that they blame Republicans in Congress, not the ranting orangutan in the White House, for the woes of the nation.

The second is that Republicans have decided to hold their noses, and wait out the Twitter storms and infantile tantrums, in order to turn their beloved “conservative principles” into actual legislation, the generous implication being that Republicans have chosen to tolerate a transitory evil for the sake of a greater and more lasting good.

The truth behind the Republican Party’s bargain with the devil is less creditable and more terrible than any of that.  Far from merely tolerating the evil of Trump for the sake of achieving a greater good, Republicans have embraced him to accomplish an even greater evil.  Republicans in Congress know full well that their so-called “agenda” is anathema to an overwhelming majority of Americans, and they also know that this has been the case for decades.  They simply don’t care.  They are nothing less than a hostile minority determined to impose their ideology on the rest of us, whatever the cost to the nation as a whole.

Because they are a minority, they also know that, without systematic gerrymandering and voter suppression, without constant cultural fear-mongering, and without a vulgar but charismatic demagogue at the helm of their party, they wouldn’t have a sinner’s chance in hell of enacting their cynical agenda, let alone achieving or retaining control of government at the state and federal level.

Americans don’t believe the country should be beggared to fund a tax cut for the richest one percent of the population, nor do they swallow the ludicrous proposition that lowering corporate taxes will somehow translate into higher wages; yet these notions are at the very heart of the Republican “agenda”.

Americans don’t want Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid to be gutted, all the while we squander ever greater sums on military spending and undeclared wars; yet that is what the Republican “agenda” calls for.

Americans don’t think that environmental and consumer protections should be stripped away, that public education should be privatized, or that public lands should be turned over to oil and mining companies; yet that is what the Republican “agenda” aims to do and is doing.

Americans don’t believe that we should return to the dark days of back-alley abortions, when women were denied any chance, let alone the right, to make their own reproductive choices; yet that is what the Republican “agenda” demands.

Americans don’t accept the proposition that gay, lesbian, and transgender citizens should be discriminated against because of the so-called “religious scruples” of their employers or business owners; yet that is central to the Republican “agenda”.

Americans don’t believe in a “whites only” country that slams the door on immigrants and turns its back on hapless refugees; yet that is where the Republican “agenda” is taking us.

The so-called “conservative principles” of the Republican Party have never aligned with or reflected the feelings of most Americans, because the ideology behind those “principles” is blind to the lessons of history, impervious to the reality of daily life, and fundamentally indecent.

For Republicans to peddle this blinkered ideology has always required the political equivalent of a street hustler’s shell game.  Look here, look there, just don’t look too closely at what lies under the shells.  Tax cuts for the wealthy are always sold as “job creation”.  Basic health and safety regulations are always smeared as a “burden” on small business.   Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid are always slammed as out-of-control “entitlements” that will someday bankrupt the nation instead of being what they actually are—the least the richest nation in the world should be willing to provide for its neediest citizens.

The Republican Party’s compact with Donald Trump is merely the latest iteration of this never-ending con.  In Trump, who is the ultimate flimflam man, Republicans have found their perfect president.  That is why the Republican Party isn’t tolerating Trump to accomplish a noble purpose; it is embracing him.  That he is a bigoted and anti-democratic autocrat doesn’t deter them in the least—because without such an autocrat in charge, they know that they have no chance of imposing their own bigoted and anti-democratic agenda on an unwilling nation.

And that is why they will never turn their back on the national embarrassment that is Donald Trump.  If Trump’s ship begins to sink, don’t expect Republicans in Congress to jump overboard.  They will go down with the ship, singing Yankee Doodle all the way, until they eventually hit bottom, and their lungs fill with saltwater and explode.  Down deep, Republicans know that, without Donald Trump, they and their so-called “principles” would already be sleeping with the fishes.