Burn It All Down? - The Bulwark - 0 views
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Trump himself is a horror show, but the most horrific story of the last four years has been the complete surrender of the GOP to Trumpism, not just on policy but on everything. The party that once imagined itself to be about ideas became a cult of personality for one of the most deplorable personalities in political history.
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This suggests that the dysfunction in the GOP was a pre-existing condition; and that bringing the party back to sanity won’t be easy.
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The transactional nature of the Senate GOP’s groveling surrender to Trump is straightforward: Simply ignore his awfulness and you will get things you want. That bargain required ignoring an ever-growing pile of awfulness. At some point the ignorance morphed into rationalization and ultimately active collaboration.
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Earlier this year, Senate Republicans decided to tie their fates inextricably to Trump, including “an apparent end to public disagreements for the next six months until the party is past the election.”
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Lewis evidently thinks so because the alternative would be so much worse. He cites the Lincoln Project’s broadside against Trump’s Senate enablers, noting that it is “a compelling ad.” But, he asks, “is this a smart strategy for conservatives who want to restore the Party of Ronald Reagan and not empower the party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?”
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“Just because you think Trump is horrible doesn’t mean you should cheer a 180-degree backlash,” he writes. “Losing the Senate would leave Republicans with little power to block a progressive, pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice nominee. . . . And when President Biden is trying to raise the top marginal tax rate north of 50 percent, I want enough Republicans in the Senate to be there to stop it.”
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All of this has elements of truth, but isn’t it also the sort of transactional argument that gave us Trumpism in the first place? It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . but for marginal tax rates?
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saving the party means voting for Lindsey Graham, Kelly Loeffler, John Cornyn, Martha McSally, Thom Tillis, Mitch McConnell, Cory Gardner, and Joni Ernst. What kind of salvation is that?
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The story of Marsha Blackburn is merely one small chapter in the long book cataloguing the many ways that Trumpism corrupts everything.
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On issue after issue—the deficit, impeachment, racial justice, corruption, the assault on the rule of law, and basic oversight—Senate Republicans have distinguished themselves by failing to uphold their most basic constitutional responsibilities. Some have simply fallen silent, while others have turned themselves into low-rent internet trolls.
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Of course, we need to be realistic: If Senate Republicans are defeated en masse, they will not necessarily be replaced by angels or statesmen, and the policy implications will not be pleasant for conservatives. There are, however, no permanent victories or defeats. Parties can renew themselves in the wilderness.
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But if the GOP does not somehow renew itself—by purging the foul air of its current corruption—it will find itself in the wilderness for the next 40 years as it tries to explain its history of Vichy Trumpism.
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Where does that leave us? I have nothing but respect for Mitt Romney, and if I lived in Nebraska, I would probably come around to voting for Ben Sasse this year. And throughout the nation, there are smart, principled, competent Republican governors like Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, and Phil Scott. As for the rest of them: Burn it all down.