Politics

The Political Resurrection of Donald J. Trump

Trump emerged from the ashes of his failed coup determined to rewrite history and retake the presidency

As the shattered glass and spilled blood settled on America’s desecrated Capitol in the days after January 6, for a brief moment it seemed as if the Republican Party might finally do what it should have done long before then, and walk away from Donald Trump. With all the chaos and lawlessness of the Trump presidency distilled into unforgettable images of the heart of American democracy being brutally attacked saturating the airwaves, perhaps elected Republicans would at last feel compelled to place their loyalty to country over party, and excise this cancer threatening to engulf us all.

Mitch McConnell gave a blistering speech from the floor of the Senate castigating the president that evening, as reports circulated that Mike Pence might invoke the 25th amendment to remove him from power. Trump’s usual chorus of sycophants and television defenders were silent, and it appeared he might have finally overplayed his hand.

Nine months later, Donald Trump is fully back in business, with a controlling stake in the Republican Party and a clear and seemingly unfettered path to the Republican nomination in 2024, as Joe Biden’s administration languishes amid factional brawling, political missteps, and congressional dysfunction.

It seems that whatever window of opportunity that had once existed for Republicans to rid themselves of Donald Trump following his coup attempt has since closed. After his acquittal in the Senate for his second impeachment following the insurrection he instigated, the vast majority of elected Republicans have obediently fallen in line like so many toy soldiers, eager to please their political master.

A recent op-ed in the New York Times by defected Republicans Miles Taylor and Gov. Christine Todd Whitman pleading with other Republicans opposed to Trump to form a political coalition with centrist Democrats tells the story of the reversed momentum within the GOP since the insurrection. “Rational Republicans are losing the party civil war,” they write, and indeed they are, as elected Republicans choose Trump’s extremism and their own short-term political survival over the welfare of the United States of America, once again.

Among Republican voters, Donald Trump remains immensely popular, and his false grievances dominate the intellectual landscape in conservative America. Tragically, Republican leaders lack the spine to oppose a man they know is actively undermining our democratic system of government, thereby becoming his accomplices.

Chuck Grassley, the 88 year old longest-serving Republican Senator from Iowa recently embraced Donald Trump at a campaign rally, saying “if I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person who’s got 91% of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart.” His own approval rating in Iowa is 81%.

Indeed, he clearly believes he needs Trump’s endorsement to win his reelection, despite the fact that he was one of the former president’s harshest critics following the insurrection, which he called “an attack on American democracy itself.” Grassley’s move lends further credibility to the notion that no longer is the GOP merely plagued by extremism emanating from its fringes, but that rather, the GOP’s establishment is itself a place where anti-democratic fascism reigns supreme.

Donald Trump has spent the entirety of his time out of office obsessively doing two things: propagating the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him via widespread fraud, and recruiting like-minded and pliable Republicans to his lost cause at every level of state and national politics. His success in both of these endeavors is breathing new life into his own personal political prospects, and threatening to strangle the throat of American democracy.

It seems Trump’s Big Lie has taken on a life of its own. Republican voters are thoroughly convinced he’s telling them the truth, and the lies surrounding the 2020 election have become essential party lore, akin to Adolf Hitler’s “Stabbed in the Back” myth about Jews orchestrating Germany’s loss in the First World War.

It’s similarly a wholly contrived tale of bitter grievance and burning resentment around which to organize the collected political venoms of an increasingly disaffected segment of the American population. The fact that it’s utterly fabricated is almost immaterial at this point, because Republican voters have decided to believe it with an almost religious conviction bordering on the insane.

59% of Republican voters polled last month agreed that “believing that Donald Trump won the 2020 election” was very or somewhat important to what being a Republican meant to them.

The Big Lie is the new Republican political orthodoxy, and a litmus test for all elected Republicans. It’s like a holy doctrine for American conservatives, alongside a belief in low taxes and a robust 2nd amendment. Except this belief shatters the foundation of America’s democratic government: that voters decide elections.

Indeed, Republicans are implementing the Big Lie into their policy. № 2 House Republican Steve Scalise spoke for the GOP when he refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 during a recent Fox News interview with Chris Wallace, declaring the election unconstitutional and saying that “state legislatures determine the rules.” Republicans across the nation are writing and passing laws attempting to replace the will of voters with decisions from Republican-dominated state legislatures and partisan flunkies.

Once you make that first fantastical logistical leap and decide to believe the lie that Trump was cheated out of his second term by nefarious forces working to thwart democracy, anything is justified. Indeed, 4 in 10 Republicans agree that “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.”

Thus, Trump’s prolonged coup and the deadly insurrection that at first horrified the nation has now been rewritten as a noble cause to right a historic wrong, and reverse the theft of the 2020 election from its rightful victor. This is the Republican Party’s new lost cause, a reawakening of old and foul American spirits this country never fully put to rest after the Civil War.

These once-dormant ghosts have reentered our national politics like an angry poltergeist, threatening to tear us apart.

As far as meaningful Republican opposition to Donald Trump, Liz Cheney’s basically it. Her lonely campaign fighting for truth and democracy was rewarded with her swift removal from House leadership and a slate of primary challengers back home in Wyoming. She soldiers on, alone and increasingly exiled from the mainstream in her broken party.

After his fiery speech denouncing Trump, Mitch McConnell went on to lead his acquittal in the Senate to shore up his own political power. He personifies the opportunistic and craven political impulses that have allowed an obvious villain like Donald Trump to survive and thrive inside the Republican Party, even after a violent coup.

Likewise, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sold whatever backbone he possessed long ago in service of his own meager personal political ambitions.

Truly, the Republican Party is devoid of heroes, and replete with groveling yes-men perfect for Trump to exploit. All who resisted him were obliterated, as with Ohio Congressman Anthony Gonzalez, once a rising young star in the GOP, who recently retired after voting to impeach Trump after the insurrection. Instead, loyalist Max Miller is running for the seat with Trump’s personal blessing, unopposed in the Republican primary. Gonzalez joins a long list of disaffected and demoralized Republican lawmakers who opted to retire rather than stand up to Trump.

The Republican Party is owned body and soul by Donald Trump, and there exists no one strong or brave enough inside the GOP to stop him. As the midterm elections approach and with Republicans possessing the historic advantage of the Democratic opposition in unified control of government amid a wobbly Biden presidency, Trump’s control over the party will only tighten.

It seems the United States is headed for a redux of the 2020 election in 2024, as Donald Trump continues on his unobstructed path toward the Republican nomination without any serious opposition. The Republican Party has taken on Trump’s lies as its own, abandoning any pretense of democratic principles.

The path forward is a perilous one, as our national politics are again hijacked by a narcissistic demagogue without regard for anything but himself, using a simultaneously radicalized and badly weakened political party as his vehicle to install himself in power. The fact of Trump’s control over the Republican Party is increasingly unambiguous, as is the mounting danger facing the United States.

As Democrats struggle to unify and pass an expansive domestic agenda, and with Joe Biden’s approval rating sinking fast, there is one man who is consolidating his strength and biding his time, a snake in the grass readying himself to strike at our democracy, again.

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