Fiscal and defense-minded Republicans must sense the ground moving under their feet. Even as the notoriously right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board excoriates Donald Trump and calls his behavior “disgraceful,” the national and state GOP parties rally to the ex-president’s defense in the impeachment trial. Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is solidly backing the presidency of Joe Biden.
Over the past month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has taken a series of steps that have enraged its traditional Republican allies. It applauded much of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan to Covid relief bill; cheered Biden’s decision to rejoin the Paris climate agreement; backed the former leader of the liberal Center of American Progress, Neera Tanden, for Office of Management and Budget director; and expressed openness to raising the minimum wage, though not to $15 an hour.
What do budget hawks think now? On Thursday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the “federal debt is set to exceed the size of the entire U.S. economy this year for only the second time since the end of World War II,” and that’s before Congress spends nearly $2 trillion on the Chamber of Commerce-endorsed COVID-19 relief bill.
And what was the Democrats’ response? They took this as better-than-expected news and “lawmakers and aides to President Biden raised the prospect of borrowing even more money to finance the president’s next set of spending plans, on infrastructure.”
Traditional Republicans like former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan do not see how the Republican senators can acquit Trump, even as they know they will. Then there’s the spectacle of the notoriously neoconservative Bill Kristol, former chief of staff to vice-president Dan Quayle, telling MSNBC’s Brian Williams on Thursday that the first priority shouldn’t be to form a new center-right party to compete with the Republicans. No, according to Kristol, the first priority should be working to help Biden have a successful presidency.
Yet, a new party is under discussion.
The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved say.
More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of “principled conservatism,” including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law – ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.
The plan would be to run candidates in some races but also to endorse center-right candidates in others, be they Republicans, independents or Democrats, the people say.
I’m reminded of Who Moved My Cheese?, the 1998 motivational bestseller. The Republicans are like the humans in that parable who thought their cheese supply would never run out and made no preparations. The party has traditionally relied on the three-legged stool of national security conservatives, social conservatives, and economic conservatives. Trump knocked out two of the legs, leaving only social conservatives, and extreme ones at that. A one-legged stool cannot stand.
More to the point, a one-legged stool is of no use to fiscal hawks. It does nothing for defense-minded conservatives. In the past, these groups have made their bed with religious nut-jobs and white supremacists, but now they’ll make them with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Letting social conservatives take the lead resulted in utter catastrophe for the country–with our health, our climate, our economy, and our standing in the world.
By the time the Noonans and Kristols realized what was happening, their party was no longer habitable and they were forced to make peace with big-spending Democrats.
Meanwhile, institutionalists like Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell didn’t wake up until January 6, when armed mobs broke into the Capitol and sought to execute them. They clearly waited too long.
What will the Republican Party be without Trump?
To find out, they first have to let him go. Since they’re sticking with him, for now the GOP is going to be far too small to compete with the Democrats.
“To find out, they first have to let him go. Since they’re sticking with him”. Reporting in The Hill today says that republicans, behind the scenes, believe the impeachment trial has so damaged Trump that he won’t be a political factor going forward. They think this is a mistake by Dems, helping them out like this. But they won’t say this out loud, because their base still adores Trump, and they won’t say out loud that Biden didn’t steal the election. They refuse to do the things that will truly make Trump a non factor, because they are terrified of him and his adoring base. It’s depressing and insane.
Read that too. Thought it wishful thinking. Or, rather, one possibility among many. I could just as easily see Trump running again in 2024 and the party finally required to make a clear choice. He’s only a non-factor if his adoring base stops adoring. Do you see that happening? If they had any confidence that would happen, they wouldn’t be so scared of the guy.
Frankly, I am not sure it will be so bad having Trump as an albatross around the GOP’s collective neck. The ads, of course, write themselves. “Senator Ted Cruz actively encouraged the insurrection—then protected the cop killers.”
But also, it allows Trump to continue to put his thumb on the scale in favor of some losers who may win primaries but can’t win a general. In 2018, 36 of Orange Shitstain’s favorites lost: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/08/665309250/scorecard-trump-declares-great-victory-but-34-of-his-candidates-lost
I believe the trend continued in 2020 as well.
So while I fervently believe he should be convicted—as a matter of national security and healing—I also don’t entirely mind if he’s there to fuck up the GOP primaries.
As far as Trump’s influence goes, we don’t really know how many courtrooms he’s headed for or when.