A Word To The Never Trumpers: Take Back The Republican Party Now

Donald Trump is publicly and privately musing about running for president again in 2024 (a grifter always wants to keep the money flowing in from the rubes who will continue to send him campaign contributions).

I’m not sure how Trump intends to run for president from a prison cell as a convicted felon in 2024, but if he wants to run for president, the Republican establishment should tell him now that he will have to do so as the head of his own political party.

Trump was never a Republican. He does not subscribe to Republican policy or philosophy (other than tax cuts for the wealthy). Trump is a malignant narcissist demagogue who subscribes to only one principle: what benefits Donald Trump. He has made it clear beyond any reasonable doubt that he is anti-democratic and anti-American, he does not believe in democracy, nor the Constitution nor the rule of law. He is an authoritarian despot who wants to be an unaccountable autocratic leader for life. He would turn the United States into a third world tin pot banana republic.

Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party should now be over. It is time for traditional Republicans and the Never Trumpers who opposed him to take back the Republican Party from him and his malignant minions and to restore its traditional Republican values. It is time for the Republican Party to tell Donald Trump that he and his ilk are no longer welcome.

The Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump deserve credit for their efforts in this campaign to defeat Donald Trump. (It did not translate into Senate and House seats or taking back state legislatures, so it was of limited effect).

But let’s be honest – Never Trumpers had four years to either build another political party organization or to take back the Republican Party from the Trumpsters, and they never made a serious concerted effort to do so.  Instead they were content to argue that “Democrats need to do this, or to do that” to blunt Trump’s malignant policies, having Democrats do all the heavy lifting and bear the consequences, aligning themselves with the Democrats only when it was politically advantageous for them to do so.

Most of these Never Trumpers assert that they are still Republicans with traditional Republican values.  They would like nothing more than to go back to being respectable Republicans again, and go back to earning a living as consultants and campaign managers for Republican campaigns. Don’t kid yourself.

If this is what Never Trumpers want, then they must earn it. Now is the window of opportunity to finally do something about it. Trump is no longer the titular head of the Republican Party, nor in a position to inflict retribution against you from the power of the presidency. Now is the time to step up and to take back the Republican Party. Wage a civil war within the party if you have to, but take back the Republican Party.

Never Trumper Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post today is being too passive in my opinion. She is talking about continuing to wage a guerrilla action against Trump as a political outsider rather than make a frontal assault to take back the Republican Party from the personality cult of Donald Trump. Never Trumpers should not passively concede the party to the malignant influence of Trump for another four years. This will be a fatal mistake. Next up for Never Trumpers:

The first and essential goal for Never Trumpers — the general description for the loose affiliation of former Republicans and anti-Trump Republicans who worked on behalf of President-elect Joe Biden — was accomplished with the defeat of President Trump. That was the overriding objective for the past four years. Having succeeded, however, Never Trumpers’ work has just begun.

For starters, whether they now identify as independents, as Democrats or as Republicans in exile, Never Trumpers can offer assistance and counsel to Democrats based on their lifetime of experience “on the other side.” During the campaign, that took the form of Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump ads. That can continue into the 2022 election cycle, as Never Trumpers work to complete the task of eradicating today’s GOP (more about that in a minute) by helping to defeat Trump toadies such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). They can also lend a hand in exposing the abject hypocrisy of Republicans on everything from their treatment of nominees (now Republicans are pearl-clutching over nominees’ tweets or ties to the financial community?) to their investigations of fake scandals.

Never Trumpers can also bring the best of the conservative sensibility to public debate, namely an awareness of the risk of unintended consequences, an appreciation for federalism (as a way of maneuvering around Republican obstructionists in Congress) and a deep appreciation of the necessity of America’s international leadership (in contrast to isolationists on the right and left). At its best, conservatism is not a laundry list of policy positions but a set of preferences — for compromise, for partnership with civil society, for executive branch restraint.

In this vein, Never Trumpers should lend support to bipartisan compromise efforts that seek to undermine Senate Republican obstruction. The $908 billion stimulus proposal is less important for what is in it than as a harbinger of potential progress on issues such as infrastructure, prescription drug prices and investment in struggling rural communities.

Never Trumpers should also champion reforms that would refurbish our democratic institutions and norms. These would include efforts to depoliticize the Justice Department (e.g., limit contacts between White House political players and the Justice Department on individual enforcement actions and investigations); repeal of “emergency” measures embedded in statutes that give the president sweeping powers (e.g., to snatch money from the Pentagon to pay for the wall); enhanced subpoena powers (with expedited review and enforcement) for Congress; serious penalties for Hatch Act violations; and a statutory requirement for the president and vice president to release their tax returns. Never Trumpers should promote serious review of necessary amendments to the Electoral Count Act (to prevent the shenanigans we saw this year), reform of the judiciary (considering 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices) and consideration of defects in the 25th Amendment.

Never Trumpers can also lend a hand to wider pro-democracy efforts in states and localities to promote voter access, spread civic education, encourage innovations such as ranked-choice voting, eliminate gerrymandering and re-enfranchise nonviolent ex-felons. The goal must be a more active and informed citizenry.

Finally, Never Trumpers should continue the fight against the right-wing populism [i.e., crypto-fascism] that has enveloped the GOP — the politics of race-baiting, irrationality and authoritarianism. At the same time, it is time to begin considering what kind of second party alternative to Democrats we need. For believers in the two-party system, a functional second party is very much required. Are the old tenets of conservatism — supply-side tax cuts, “small government” — feasible or is there a model of “radical centrism” that incorporates the best of free markets with support for nimble government action to promote the common good? (The Niskanen Center is among the leading lights in this effort.)

In sum, Trump is leaving, but Trumpism remains an ongoing threat to multiracial democracy. Freed from tribal loyalties, Never Trumpers can prioritize measures that restore and strengthen the foundations, habits and norms of democracy — an undertaking worthy of the aim to “form a more perfect union.”

There is one glaring problem with Rubin’s plan: Never Trumpers have to actually get elected to office in order to effectuate this plan. This means they either need to build their own political party organization, or to take back the Republican Party from the malignant influence of Donald Trump. They cannot afford to continue to passively wage a guerrilla action as political outsiders against Trump. The stakes are far too high.

Jochen Bittner explains how Trump’s “stolen election” mythology is taking a page right out of Germany’s dark past. 1918 Germany Has a Warning for America:

[W]atching President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign since Election Day, I can’t help but see a parallel to one of the most dreadful episodes from Germany’s history.

One hundred years ago, amid the implosions of Imperial Germany, powerful conservatives who led the country into war refused to accept that they had lost. Their denial gave birth to arguably the most potent and disastrous political lie of the 20th century — the Dolchstosslegende, or stab-in-the-back myth.

Its core claim was that Imperial Germany never lost World War I. Defeat, its proponents said, was declared but not warranted. It was a conspiracy, a con, a capitulation — a grave betrayal that forever stained the nation. That the claim was palpably false didn’t matter. Among a sizable number of Germans, it stirred resentment, humiliation and anger. And the one figure who knew best how to exploit their frustration was Adolf Hitler.

Don’t get me wrong: This is not about comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler, which would be absurd. But the Dolchstosslegende provides a warning. It’s tempting to dismiss Mr. Trump’s irrational claim that the election was “rigged” as a laughable last convulsion of his reign or a cynical bid to heighten the market value for the TV personality he might once again intend to become, especially as he appears to be giving up on his effort to overturn the election result.

But that would be a grave error. Instead, the campaign should be seen as what it is: an attempt to elevate “They stole it” to the level of legend, perhaps seeding for the future social polarization and division on a scale America has never seen.

* * *

The startling aspect about the Dolchstosslegende is this: It did not grow weaker after 1918 but stronger. In the face of humiliation and unable or unwilling to cope with the truth, many Germans embarked on a disastrous self-delusion: The nation had been betrayed, but its honor and greatness could never be lost. And those without a sense of national duty and righteousness — the left and even the elected government of the new republic — could never be legitimate custodians of the country.

In this way, the myth was not just the sharp wedge that drove the Weimar Republic apart. It was also at the heart of Nazi propaganda, and instrumental in justifying violence against opponents. The key to Hitler’s success was that, by 1933, a considerable part of the German electorate had put the ideas embodied in the myth — honor, greatness, national pride — above democracy.

The Germans were so worn down by the lost war, unemployment and international humiliation that they fell prey to the promises of a “Führer” who cracked down hard on anyone perceived as “traitors,” leftists and Jews above all. The stab-in-the-back myth was central to it all. When Hitler became chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter wrote that “irrepressible pride goes through the millions” who fought so long to “undo the shame of 9 November 1918.”

Germany’s first democracy fell. Without a basic consensus built on a shared reality, society split into groups of ardent, uncompromising partisans. And in an atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, the notion that dissenters were threats to the nation steadily took hold.

Alarmingly, that seems to be exactly what is happening in the United States today. According to the Pew Research Center, 89 percent of Trump supporters believe that a Joe Biden presidency would do “lasting harm to the U.S.,” while 90 percent of Biden supporters think the reverse. And while the question of which news media to trust has long split America, now even the largely unmoderated Twitter is regarded as partisan. Since the election, millions of Trump supporters have installed the alternative social media app Parler. Filter bubbles are turning into filter networks.

In such a landscape of social fragmentation, Mr. Trump’s baseless accusations about electoral fraud could do serious harm. A staggering 88 percent of Trump voters believe that the election result is illegitimate, according to a YouGov poll. A myth of betrayal and injustice is well underway.

It took another war and decades of reappraisal for the Dolchstosslegende to be exposed as a disastrous, fatal fallacy. If it has any worth today, it is in the lessons it can teach other nations. First among them: Beware the beginnings.

This historical perspective dovetails perfectly with Ezra Klein’s explanation that Trump is attempting a coup in plain sight (excerpt):

That this coup probably will not work — that it is being carried out farcically, erratically, ineffectively — does not mean it is not happening, or that it will not have consequences. Millions will believe Trump, will see the election as stolen. The Trump family’s Twitter feeds, and those of associated outlets and allies, are filled with allegations of fraud and lies about the process (reporter Isaac Saul has been doing yeoman’s work tracking these arguments, and his thread is worth reading). It’s the construction of a confusing, but immersive, alternative reality in which the election has been stolen from Trump and weak-kneed Republicans are letting the thieves escape.

This is, to borrow Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar’s framework, “an autocratic attempt.” That’s the stage in the transition toward autocracy in which the would-be autocrat is trying to sever his power from electoral check. If he’s successful, autocratic breakthrough follows, and then autocratic consolidation occurs. In this case, the would-be autocrat stands little chance of being successful. But he will not entirely fail, either. What Trump is trying to form is something akin to an autocracy-in-exile, an alternative America in which he is the rightful leader, and he — and the public he claims to represent — has been robbed of power by corrupt elites.

“Democracy works only when losers recognize that they have lost,” writes political scientist Henry Farrell. That will not happen here.

An “autocracy-in-exile” might be the appropriate remedy here, like Napoleon’s second exile after the battle of Waterloo to the remote island of Saint Helena, in the southern Atlantic Ocean, where he lived out the rest of his days.

Never Trumpers must take back control of the Republican Party and banish Trump and his malignant minions from the party for the sake of the country.