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For four years, he enjoyed his unwavering loyalty. They shielded him from prosecution, tacitly endorsed when children at the border were taken away from their parents and placed in cages, and they looked the other way as Americans peacefully protesting were gassed for a photo opportunity.
Now, in the throes of Donald Trump’s presidency, Republicans who once stood shoulder to shoulder with the man who reformed his political party at will, are struggling to distance themselves from his unsubstantiated claims that his election is being stolen.
“Scandalous, unjustified and a terrible mistake,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said of Trump’s erratic prosecution of his false accusations; “Very disturbing,” according to Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey; and “reckless” in the words of former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
This breaking of ranks by a growing number of senators, congressmen, governors and other elected officials, which comes only after Trump’s cause seemed lost, heralds an imminent battle for the future direction of the Republican party with its missing figurehead. From Stage.
Those who are now openly critical after years of silence must weigh the consequences of speaking out while remaining loyalists within the party determined to carry the banner of Trumpism in the 2024 elections and beyond. That faction includes Republican senators like Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a staunch Trump ally who has urged the president to “keep fighting, exhaust all options” in his futile effort to demonstrate electoral fraud. widespread.
“Trumpism will remain because it is a tremendously popular figure among its base. But, you know, it’s always been pragmatic for a lot of Republicans, “said Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of the best-selling How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.
“There is a part of the Republican party that supports him mainly because he is Trump, he owns the libraries and he says racist things. And then another group supports him because he is pushing the toughest policies on the right.
“I hope the Republican party will give priority to whatever mechanism they need to dominate the courts, to continue to suppress the vote, to make sure that they can, as a minority party, maintain control of the levers of government.”
Stanley questioned the timing of those who seem to break free from Trump by speaking now.
“The Republican Party has been doing this undemocratic thing since long before Trump,” he said.
“They have been acting as if the Democrats are not legitimate and have no responsibility to co-govern with the Democrats and their sole purpose is to get the Democrats out and rule as a minority party.
“I mean, we’ve had four years of this. When people do what is minimally expected, that doesn’t mean you should be full of praise for them … The rules have been broken so much that we wonder if we should praise people when the president is obviously trying to manipulate and steal elections “.
It remains to be seen whether more moderate senior Republicans who have been critical of Trump, such as Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, will dominate as the party charts its course toward Biden’s presidency.
Romney launched a sternly worded statement on Friday that he said Trump’s claims that the elections were rigged, corrupt and stolen were wrong. “[It] it harms the cause of freedom here and throughout the world, weakens the institutions that are at the base of the Republic and recklessly ignites destructive and dangerous passions, ”he wrote.
Other Republican figures are still aboard Trump’s train even as he skips the rails, including the fiercely loyal DeSantis, Cruz, Cotton, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and apologists like Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Justice. Representatives and Rudy Giuliani. The former New York mayor and Trump’s personal attorney was widely ridiculed for his appearance in the recent Borat film.
All have publicly endorsed the president’s false claims of embezzlement, overlooking the fact that they were made without proof.
“Those are the most dangerous politicians we have. They have given democracy a zero value, ”said Stanley, the Yale professor.
“Some of them, like Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, you know, could be more dangerous in various ways than Trump.”
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