For those wondering what it will take to get Republicans in Congress, in the administration, and elsewhere to stand up to Trump and say “Enough”, the answer is — they can’t without destroying themselves. The tools they use to gain power are stuck in a positive feedback loop. The crazy keeps getting crazier.
The right wing has developed an entire information ecosystem that works to ramp up fear, anger, and division with alternative facts, false scandals, and outright conspiracy theory, not to mention the Big Lie technique. It can be useful, especially when your base is composed of right wing authoritarian followers. It is how they get people to support them even though their real aim is something very different. As Kevin Drum put it back in 2018:
Today, the Republican Party exists for one and only one purpose: to pass tax cuts for the rich and regulatory rollbacks for corporations. They accomplish this using one and only method: unapologetically racist and bigoted appeals to win the votes of the heartland riff-raff they otherwise treat as mere money machines for their endless mail-order cons.
It takes authoritarian leaders to pull this off, people with no empathy or moral compunctions, people whose only interest is self interest. Sara Robinson had an extended series on authoritarianism which has this to say about these high "social dominance orientation (SDO) leader types:
High-SDO people are characterized by four core traits: they are dominating, opposed to equality, committed to expanding their own personal power, and amoral. These are usually accompanied by other unsavory traits, many of which render them patently unsuitable for leadership roles in a democracy:
This breaks down with Trump because while he’s all that the description above includes and more, he’s also an avid consumer of the material used to stoke up the base. He’s drinking the kool aid and amplifying it. Matthew Gertz writing at Politico back in January 2018 traced direct links between FOX and Trump tweets.
Everyone has a theory about Trump’s hyperaggressive early morning tweetstorms. Some think they are a deliberate ploy the president uses to distract the press from his administration’s potential weaknesses, or to frame the public debate to his liking. Others warn his rapid shifts from one topic to another indicate mental instability.
But my many hours following the president’s tweets for Media Matters for America, the progressive media watchdog organization, have convinced me the truth is often much simpler: The president is just live-tweeting Fox, particularly the network’s Trump-loving morning show, Fox & Friends.
The problem with this is that Trump is drinking the koolaid meant to keep the base in line. He’s getting a steady diet of ego massage, CT, and alternative facts which he then turns around and amplifies. The purpose of FOX and other right wing information channels is to inflame; Trump then throws gasoline on the flames — and they turn up the heat in response. Lather, rinse, repeat. Crack cocaine for the narcissist in chief — and the base.
There are limits to how far this can go — positive feedback can only be sustained so long before there’s a collapse of some kind. Trump is making self-impeachment a reality. For Republicans, the dilemma is this.
If they decide to break with Trump or push back in an effort to turn things down to sane levels, they are also going against the right wing media machine that supports them in the first place. The base will turn on them. There’s no good place for them to go.
When they fell in line behind Trump because the base was energized by him, they placed themselves in the hands of a man with no sense of self-awareness or restraint. They took the brakes off and now they’re afraid to jump off the Trump train. It’s why a number of Republicans are retiring ahead of the crash they see coming. For the rest it seems to be a choice between doubling down or trying to keep as low a profile as possible, while grabbing what they can while they can.
Again, Trump is setting the tone. As Charles P. Pierce puts it:
We apparently have reached the smash-and-grab portion of the great grift. El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago knows he's cooked, so he and a few henchmen go out and distract us all by admitting that he's a fool and that they're all thieves while he stuffs his pockets against the advent of a clean getaway...
When the collapse comes, it’s not going to be pretty. The question is, how far will the damage reach and who will be caught in the rubble? To return to Kevin Drum,
Like it or not, this is the modern Republican Party. It no longer serves any legitimate purpose. It needs to be crushed and the earth salted behind it, while a new conservative party rises to take its place. This new party should be conservative; brash; ruthless when it needs to be; as simpleminded as any major party usually is; and absolutely dedicated to making Democrats look like idiots. There should be no holds barred except for one: no appeals to racism. None. Not loud ones, not subtle ones. Whatever else it is, it should be a conservative party genuinely open to any person of any color.
UPDATE: The other side of the GOP dilemma and the Big Money behind them is the people they’ve sold out to. Ruben Bolling captures it nicely in his latest adventures of Lucky Ducky. See if you can spot cameos by Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Moscow Mitch, Rudy Giuliani, Wayne La Pierre, Epstein...