Will the Republican Party be Saved by Trump Defeat?

© David Burton 2020

NOTE: Boldface text indicate emphasis by me, David Burton, and not necessarily by the author of the quoted text.

     The Republican party spent four years enabling Donald Trump: backing up his lies, defending his most egregious misbehaviors, shattering longstanding democratic norms to keep his - and by extension, their - grip on power. But, by refusing to tell Trump to concede an election he clearly lost, the Trumpist faithful were truly following him off a cliff – and threatening to take the Republican Party andAmerica with them.

     Donald Trump lost the popular vote by more than 5 million votes. He was handily trounced in the electoral college, too. There is no real question that he lost the election and Joe Biden won.
     And yet, predictably, the president who spent his entire time in office denying the facts that were in front of his face insisted that the clear results of this election must be the result of malfeasance. We know that to assuage his own ego and maintain his position, he would say and do just about anything. We know that he was not a statesman nor a person who cared about anything beyond himself. We know he was happy to tear the nation apart at the seams if it meant he got what he wanted. And we know that many members of the Republican party obsequiously aided and abetted him.
     But there was some question of when enough would be enough. Surely there was some line the president could cross that would directly imperil America itself and make Republicans finally say: Enough! But following his election loss, the president essentially mounted what in any developing country would be called an attempted coup. He spread outright lies about America’s system of free and fair elections, claiming he won when he didn’t. His sycophantic legal team unsuccessfully tried to pull issues out of thin air to undermine the American system of voting. He was trying to exert his power so as to install himself as an unelected leader. He refused to concede so that he might find some way to illegally grab power. And too many Republicans were letting him get away with this outrageous behavior!
     This wasn’t about letting the president have his temper tantrum or, as one GOP official put it, “humoring him for a bit”. This was about whether Americans could trust our system of democracy.
     What Trump and his Republican enablers did was a wholly different thing. They weren’t saying that the system was unfair because it excluded some people who deserved to be a part of it. They weren’t even saying that they lost because the rules were unfair. They said that one side cheated, that the system was rigged. Once that cat is out of the bag – once you sow widespread distrust in the entire concept of free and fair American elections – it’s awfully hard to put it back in.
     When a president of the United States refuses to concede, it has a real, tangible impact on the nation’s future. The incoming president needs to be fully briefed; he needs to be able to staff up and start to put his team in place so that he can hit the ground running. It’s bad for the country if we slow that process down. And it’s especially dangerous during an escalating pandemic.
     It’s sad and stunning that it came to this: that the integrity of the American electoral process was at stake, and many of the most powerful and prominent members of the Republican party still declared fealty to their Dear Leader, even at the expense of the nation. This isn’t just about one party acting unscrupulously because they’re sore losers. This is how democracy itself comes undone.
     Removing Trump from the White House is one thing – fixing America is another.[1]

     Republicans squandered an opportunity to regain the trust of the American people by hanging on to the coattails of the discredited Donald Trump immediately following the November 3rd 2020 election. Trump’s election defeat may yet save the GOP, but only if the Republican politicians regain their senses and resume their obligations to the American people and to the Republican/Conservative principles on which the GOP was founded. What is needed is a return to Ronald Reagan Republicanism.

     In March of 2019 I took note of the surrender of Republicans and Conservatives to a despotic and irrational president, Donald Trump.[2] In the article I penned at that time, I pointed out the following.

     It has unfortunately become obvious that the majority of Conservatives and Republicans have sold their souls to the devil by blindly supporting Donald J. Trump during and after his ascendency to the office of the president of the United State of America. Too many Conservatives and Republicans have decided to hold their noses against the stench drifting out of the oval office in order to have some long-standing items on their agenda enacted.
     Far too many Republicans have lost their way. Instead of standing up for conservative and Republican principles, they have sheepishly surrendered to the man in the White House and turned a blind eye to all his misdeeds, missteps, stupidities, falsehoods, and boorish behavior. There has been the occasional voice in the wilderness,[3] but there was no follow-up and no support by the vast majority of Republican politicians.
     Trump’s threat to declare a National Emergency to circumvent Congress and fund his border wall should have caused a major revolt among Conservatives and Republicans alike. One would have thought that constitutional conservatives would be leading the fight in the Senate to reverse the president’s extraordinary emergency declaration and reclaim Congress’s power of the purse. But that never happened. Instead, we saw plenty of excuses, with Republicans arguing that what the president was doing was technically legal, even if he should not have that kind of power.
     That was a cop-out. Why would any Republican not vote to use the express authority Congress granted itself under the law to do so?
     “Republicans might feel a political imperative to support their president, but Donald Trump repeatedly demonstrated that he deserved no such support. In fact, Republicans should have felt a non-political imperative to do the right thing and make Trump powerless until he could be voted out of office in 2020 or removed from office sooner than that. Republicans needed to demonstrate that they would stand up and serve the American people rather than meekly keep their mouths shut about Trump's decidedly non-presidential outrageous and bullying behavior.
     Too many Republicans rationalized their support for Trump by pointing to tax cuts, rollbacks in regulation and Trump’s appointments of conservative judges. But Donald Trump’s overall atrocious behavior as president should have made them unwilling to surrender their Republican and Conservative values. Unfortunately, too many Republicans and Conservatives confused Trump’s bluster and swagger with actual strength and rational leadership. They refused to accept the fact that Donald Trump proved himself to be nothing more than an egotistical schoolyard bully. Sadly, Republicans and Conservatives reacted to Trump’s outrages by wringing their hands, while marching in lock step behind him.

     Donald Trump exploited many of the grievances and attitudes that festered for decades on the right. Trump showed that he had more in common with populist demagogues like the “Know Nothings”, Father Charles Coughlin, and George Wallace than with true conservatives like Ronald Reagan. Until the last election, Conservatives had the good taste, sound judgment and wisdom to reject and even marginalize those uglier voices on the right. That ended with Donald Trump in the 2016 election.[4]

     While several of Donald Trumps’ presidential actions were those which had been advocated for many years by Conservatives and Republicans alike, the dark side of Trump and his irrational actions and pronouncements far outweighed the positive aspects of his successes. His dictatorial behavior violated the core principles of all Americans – Conservatives and Republicans included. There should be no argument that Donald Trump was authoritarian and dictatorial in the most negative sense. While that does not mean we shouldn’t give him some credit where it is due, it also means that Republicans and Conservatives should not have given him a “free pass” simply because many of his “positive” actions were in concert with Conservative and Republican principles. His reducing regulations and government power was a significantly good action. A handful of good things however is not “winning” and does not excuse his boorish and bullying behavior. The positive things that Trump accomplished simply did not justify Conservatives and Republicans selling their souls to the devil by ignoring Trumps’ overwhelmingly bad behavior. In many cases, the love affair between Donald Trump and ultra-Conservatives became increasingly embarrassing as each fawned over the other.[5]
     Honest Conservatives and Republicans should never have supported a habitual liar. Donald Trump’s tweets were full of lies, misinformation, and insults to many, including international allies and other respectable, powerful people. Trump’s support was based on emotion and Trump's cult of personality.[6] This should not have constituted a rationale for support by those in his Republican party or those with conservative values.
     That Donald Trump is a habitual liar is indisputable. Unfortunately, Trump’s egotism and thin skin made the truth an irrelevant issue in the words coming out of his mouth.[7]
     It became increasingly obvious that too many Republican politicians blindly goose-stepped after their president. Paraphrasing one source: There is no Republican party, it’s Trump’s authoritarian populist party now![8]
     A longtime conservative columnist argued that GOP members of Congress “have become the president’s poodles.” The columnist criticized lawmakers for “having no higher ambition than to placate the president.”

     “Forget policy. Forget ideology. Forget hating Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi. From Indiana to Arizona to Ohio, the name of the game for Republican{s} . . . has been to flaunt their Trump love. And woe unto anyone deemed insufficiently smitten.
     “President Trump has transformed the Republican Party from a political organization into a cult of personality. . .” (Ref. 8)

     As a Conservative with a Republican leaning, I welcomed many of the conservative policies and initiatives implemented by President Trump [7], but as an American citizen, I have strongly disapproved of the man in that office and the person who represented that office, America, and me. Simply stated, those who supported Donald Trump in order to get their way – politically, financially, socially, and economically - sold their souls to devil. “Republicans and fellow Conservatives: You should have stood up and fought for what you believed in and you should never have sold your souls to the devil!” (Ref. 3)

     A short time later in 2019, I added the following thoughts about my discontent with our obsequious Republican and conservative politicians and their unthinking followers.[9]

     “With more than a year to go, the 2020 presidential campaign has already begun in earnest. . .
     “If the Republican Party is stupid enough or cowardly enough to give Donald Trump a shot at a second term in office, and unless the Democrats foolishly nominate for president an aged Socialist/Communist or a wacko Massachusetts demagogue who claims some obscure descent from Native Americans, the Democrats will regain the presidency in 2020.
     “The question facing Conservatives and diehard Republicans today is: ‘Will they stick with Trump and hope the most widely despised president since Richard Nixon can repeat his improbable 2016 victory and claim a second term?’
     “{Unfortunately, the Republicans nominated Donald Trump for a second term, which, fortunately, the American people denied to him!} The thumping the GOP took in the midterm election was not thorough enough to embolden them to turn their back on a president who still {thrilled} his rabid base.
     “The gain of a few Senate seats {didn’t} mitigate the loss of the House, or of seven Republican governors. Nor {did} it change an electoral college map that shifted decisively in Democratic favor . . .
     “While those Trumpites are intensely loyal to the president, there aren't enough to re-elect him. And the midterm demonstrated that the independents who gave him a shot two years ago are now heavily against Trump.
     “Unless the GOP dumps Trump and unites behind a more appealing — or less unappealing — primary challenger, the destruction of the Republican Party that began with the 2018 vote will be complete in 2020.
     “Republicans need a principled conservative who can reach the party founders and the old GOP establishment who were never behind Trump — and there's plenty of them.
      - - -
     “Republicans need to understand and believe that Trump can be beaten . . . They also need to admit that Donald Trump will likely be defeated if he is allowed to run for president in the 2020 national election. They should also accept the fact that Donald Trump is too egotistical to admit that he can be defeated. As a result, Republicans can’t expect him to admit that he can’t win a second term. It’s up to them to come to that conclusion and to act accordingly. The president has repeatedly proven toxic to the GOP's political prospects and hatred of him would likely draw Democrats, Independents and disillusioned Republicans to the polls in overwhelming numbers to vote against him come November 2020. The Dump Trump movement within the Republican Party needs to begin in earnest now!
      - - -
     “{Americans have} seen enough. That’s why nearly nine million more voters backed Democratic U.S. House candidates in 2018 than they did Trump-defending Republicans. That’s why twelve million more voters favored Democratic U.S. Senate candidates over Republicans. If the United States followed the same democratic practices as most of the democracies with which we care to compare ourselves, Trump’s tenure would have ended after the 2018 election delivered a resounding ‘no confidence’ vote.[10]
      - - -
     “. . . {In 2019, what would} Republicans have to lose by dumping him? ‘Republicans need to demonstrate that they will stand up and serve the American people, rather than meekly keep their mouths shut about Trump's decidedly non-presidential outrageous bullying behavior.’[11]
     “{In 2019, was} the Republican Party ready to commit suicide? Like Lemmings, {would} they march in lock step with Trump over the edge of the cliff in 2020? . . .
      - - -
     “ ’The GOP . . . is doomed in the long run if no Republican stands for the principles that the party has for so long said it defends: governmental restraint and individual liberty. Ultimately, the best way is for the GOP to change course — to repudiate Trump and his chaos-inducing, nativist, racist approach . . . ’[12]
      - - -
     “Based upon a mountain of evidence that Donald Trump should never have been elected president in the first place and even more convincing proof since his assuming office that he should not be nominated for a second term, the Republican Party {needed} to face reality and start the process of dumping Trump and selecting an acceptable candidate {long before the 2020 nomination and election campaigning} ” (Ref. 9)

     As the 2020 presidential elections drew nearer, I repeated my concerns that all too many Republicans and Conservatives had thrown in the towel and had submitted to the unconscionable and irrational leadership of the man unfitted for the presidency of these united States. My concerns were stated in an article in February of 2020. [13]

     “In 1776, America rebelled against the rule of King George III. The Declaration of Independence justified the Americans’ action by spelling out the autocratic actions perpetrated by the British ruler and listed 27 grievances against the king. Americans decided that their ruler had ‘done them wrong’ and that his dictatorial actions justified his removal as their legitimate leader. Now, 244 years later, America has another leader who is abusing his powers of office in an autocratic manner, all too reminiscent of the actions of that British sovereign of yore.
     “In 1776, America concluded that King George III had performed acts that were inconsistent with their rights and that he had misused the authority of his office. America judged him guilty as charged and proceeded - via the American revolution - to remove King George from authority over them.
     “In 2020, it has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Donald Trump has misused the authority granted him under the laws and Constitution of the United States of America. The facts were fully uncovered and proven in the impeachment hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives. President Trump used his office unlawfully for personal gain, jeopardized American security and obstructed Congress in its investigation of these and other charges.
     “The President and his Republican sycophants initially denied any wrongdoing by blocking the presentation of documents verifying the charges against the president and prohibiting witnesses from appearing before the House of Representatives and the Senate.
     “When it became obvious to the President and the Republicans that Trump had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and the facts of the president’s undeniable illegal actions could not be hidden, the President and his toadies reverted to a defense that, in effect, said ‘O.K., so he’s guilty, but that doesn’t mean he should be removed from office.’ The Constitution provides for removal from office when the President is guilty of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’. The President’s defenders dismiss this step by making the allegation that such a move would deny the American people the right not to re-elect him in the next election. Our Republican senators who were supposedly elected in order to represent and serve the American people and to adhere to their oaths of office under the Constitution have instead chosen to lick the boots of this would be dictator. They have chosen to ignore their sworn duty to be impartial jurors in the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. . . . with one exception, that of Mitt Romney, the senator from Utah.
      - - -
     “Shamefully, ‘Senate Republicans followed through on their cover-up of President Trump’s abuses of presidential power by blocking witnesses and subpoenas for his Senate trial. . . . Senate Republicans acquitted Trump in the impeachment trial. . . . And the leading members of his political party, like the trained seals they’ve become, clapped and hooted their praise. . . . When the history books are written, the past week-and-a-half may very well be seen as the point of no return, when the guardrails on our democracy came off and our political system became permanently and irretrievably infected by the virus of Trumpism.[14]
     “. . . {Some} Republicans who were too intimidated by the president to vote to convict him openly admitted that the charges were true.
      - - -
     “But there was {some} good news, and there were {some good} people to be proud of. Sen. Mitt Romney, the sole Republican in Congress to be honest about Donald Trump, reminded Americans what patriotism and political courage look like. Romney’s vote to convict Trump has already generated the viciousness that is Trump World’s calling card, but it has also earned him a degree of admiration reserved for few politicians, one that will endure in history.[15]” (Ref. 13)

     Immediately following the November 2020 elections, it was written:

     “Are Democratic hacks in Philly fiddling with the ballots? Probably. But what do you expect? It’s Philadelphia.
     “Did some big-name pollsters release ridiculous ‘Biden winning by a bazillion’ numbers on the eve of the election to drive down GOP turnout? Either that, or they really stink at their jobs.
     “And could all of this cost Donald Trump the election? Could it put Joe Biden behind the big desk?
     “As a conservative Republican, all I can say is: ‘I sure (expletive) hope so!’ And you should, too.
     “No, this is not a #NeverTrumper rant. It’s true I’ve never voted for the guy. But I’m not one of the pathetic GOP elitists who crave approval from the Boston Globe-Democrat so much they can’t admit what Trump’s gotten right.
     “It’s true: We had a rockin’ economy before COVID-19, we’ve made more progress on Mideast peace than Obama and Clinton combined, and one Amy Coney Barrett is worth a million moronic tweets.
     “But even people who love Trump have to admit: He’s high maintenance. For the GOP, having Donald Trump as president is like having a tiger for a pet. Sure, it’s kind of cool and scares the snot out of your annoying, liberal neighbors. But it’s expensive, eats whatever it wants and — well, you’re gonna need a shovel. A big one.
     “And now, after four years of the Tiger King presidency, Republicans have gotten all the good they can out of the Trump moment. And, it has to be said, the benefits of having Trump draw more working class Americans into the party — including, according to the exit polls, more black and Hispanic voters than any Republican since 1960 — have come at a high cost.
     “That price can be seen in the polls. No, I’m not talking about political polling. After years of defending them to skeptical readers and talk radio listeners, I’ve given up. I currently rank the ‘science’ of polling somewhere between psychic healing and Beacon Hill economics.
     “But the polls that can’t be ignored are the ones voters poured into on Tuesday. Yes, Donald Trump did better than expected. But he still did lousy. After the 2018 #BlueWave disaster, Trump managed to turn Joe Biden into the top vote-getter in American history.
     “Joe. Biden.
     “Biden is, by all objective standards, the Democrats’ worst nominee for president since, well, their last one. But that’s a fluke. In any other year, this doddering, marble-mouthed intellectual midget would be laughed off the political stage.
     “It’s only Trump’s ability to get American voters to reject him that could turn Grandpa Joe into a vote-grabbing juggernaut.
     “The fear was that the cost of Trump’s presidency would be a complete GOP collapse like the one predicted by the polls (did I mention how lousy they are?) that he would reduce the GOP to a rump party for a generation.
     “But the Republican carnage so many in the party feared didn’t materialize. Trump managed, despite COVID-19, the media and his own low approval ratings, to fight Biden to a draw (did I mention how lousy Biden is?)
     “{NOTE: This was written right after election day, before all the final tallies were in.} The GOP controls the Senate. Conservative judges fill the SCOTUS. If Trump gets edged out in Arizona and Wisconsin now, that’s a win. The Globe-Democrat crowd will be denied the vindication they craved from a crushing Trump loss, and the only cost will be a couple of years of Biden bumbling around the White House looking for the TV remote.
      - - -
     “{As the} Trump presidency ends now, Republicans can build on the bridges he’s built to working-class Americans and take advantage of the now-exposed insanity of the political left. Democrats will be stuck with their Green New Deal/Defund the Police extremism, but without anti-Trump animus to balance it out.
     “Be smart, Republicans. Let Trump lose. You’ll be the biggest winners of all.” (Ref. 16)

     Immediately following the 2020 voting, a Massachusetts journalist issued the following warning.

     “A reckoning awaits the Republican Party.
     “GOP leaders have stood by while the president praised and emboldened white supremacists, delegitimized the election, and made a deadly pandemic far deadlier. More generally, the Republican Party has associated itself with the QAnon conspiracy theory, denied climate change, and adopted voter suppression as its main election strategy. Trump may soon be gone, but Trumpism still looms. In conservative states especially, it will be difficult for Republicans to extricate themselves from this movement. But here in Massachusetts, and in several other states where the GOP has a tradition of moderation, Republicans can show there is still another path. They can and must repudiate every element of Trumpism. This is their only viable option, both morally and politically.
     “As the Democratic Party drifts to the left at the national level and in the Bay State, there is room for Republicans to seize the center. But they can claim that political middle only by denouncing Trump and a brand of politics that revolves around cruelty and conspiracy theories.
     “This should matter for Democrats, too. Because America’s only real way forward as a country is with a politics in which both parties affirm some very basic values: a commitment to democratic institutions, free elections with robust protections for the right to vote, trust in science. The Republican Party needs to declare that these are not partisan issues. It shouldn’t take any special courage to defend democracy, decency, and the rule of law, but that is the political climate we’re in. If there is anywhere that Republicans can stand up for those ideals, it is here in Massachusetts.
     “{Republican} Kevin O’Connor’s Senate run shows what will happen in statewide elections if the Republicans fail to reject Trumpism. O’Connor defended many of Trump’s policies and blamed the pandemic on ‘the communist Chinese party.’ It amounted to a blowout loss. {Longtime Democratic incumbent} Ed Markey defeated him by 33 points. Only three major-party candidates for the Senate appear to have fared worse than O’Connor: Democrats in Wyoming, West Virginia, and Nebraska. If Republicans don’t try to run toward the center in Massachusetts, they will become like Democrats in Wyoming, consigned to irrelevance.
     “Yet the state’s most popular political leader is a Republican: Governor Charlie Baker. Baker has been willing to criticize Trump publicly, as when Trump waged baseless attacks on mail-in voting and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. (Baker’s recent admission that he blanked his own presidential ballot was thus a disappointing show of weakness.) Baker’s approval ratings are much higher among Democrats than among Republicans. In a UMass Lowell poll completed in May, 87 percent of registered Democrats in Massachusetts approved of Baker, versus 65 percent of registered Republicans. Those same Republicans gave Trump 89 percent approval ratings.
     “What does that tell us? If Baker wishes to run for another term in 2022, he could face a vigorous challenge from the right in the Republican primary. If the party doesn’t veer to the center, it will excise the only leaders who can actually win statewide elections.” (Ref. 17)

     Bad marriages usually lead to ugly divorces and, unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on one’s perspective - that’s where the marriage of Donald Trump and the Republican Party is finally heading. And the sooner that the divorce takes place the better for all concerned. If truth be known, many Republicans were in fact never that much into Trump. They liked the judges, the tax cuts, even some of the “own the libs” bombast. But they were turned off by the self-indulgence, the conspiracy theorizing and the constant need for praise and attention. But, few conservative politicians or media figures were willing to say this.
     The result of all this was a massive turnout of anti-Trump voting in 2020. A significant chunk of the voting took the form of Republicans or Republican-leaning voters who split their tickets or declined to vote for the top of the ticket. In normal times, if you were willing to vote for a Republican governor, senator or congressman, you were a gettable vote for a Republican presidential candidate. But Trump lost in many states where other Republicans won.
     For four years, Donald Trump was president, which also meant he was the de facto head of the Republican Party. This allowed the acolytes of Trumpism to marry Trumpism, nationalism, patriotism, populism, tribalism, MAGA, etc., to old-fashioned party loyalty.
     That marriage is over now. And the breakup is ugly and revealing in its ugliness. For many, Trumpism wasn’t about the party. For a few, it wasn’t even about the country. It was about him. Trump lost his grip on the office, but he still went on doing everything he could to hold on to the cult by claiming he was robbed. Sadly, many Republicans chose to go down this dead-end road with him, further alienating all clear thinking Americans.[18]

     The GOP may well go down the tubes because of Donald Trump. Trump’s failure to acknowledge his 2020 election defeat, coupled with the blind and irrational support by many GOP supporters, including several prominent Republican politicians given to Trump’s totally unfounded charges of election fraud, may have doomed the Republican party for years to come. The threat of Trump running for president in 2024 may be the final nail in the coffin. “A fundraising email that asks the question ‘Should President Trump run in 2024?’ is better evidence that Donald Trump controls the Republican Party than it is evidenced of Donald Trump giving up in 2020.” If Donald Trump continues to exert control of the Republican Party, nothing can save the GOP! (Ref. 19)

     Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election may well have saved the Republican party from long-lasting insignificance, if not oblivion. Donald Trump’s term in office has been so disruptive, irrational, degrading and un-American that Democrats, independents, liberals, many conservatives and even moderate Republicans have turned away from the Republican party. I am one such conservative and moderate Republican. I, along with many other thinking Americans, have, in recent years, shunned the Republican party at the national level. For the past four years, the Republican National Party has not received my financial support. In this most recent national election, the Republican presidential candidate did not receive my support nor my vote. Donald Trump’s defeat may have allowed me – and many other disaffected Americans - to return to my capitalistic and Republican leanings. Will the Republican Party return to its fundamental American conservative roots? Will the Republican Party clean its house of the detritus and hatred left behind by 4 years of Donald Trump? Time will tell. The Republican Party may have been saved by the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020. Will the Republican party take advantage of this opportunity?

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