POLITICAL WATERLOO

As the monthly countdown toward the 2020 election continued, I began to suspect more and more that for the losing party it would be a political Waterloo. It was an election – arguably the most important election since the Civil War era – neither party could afford to lose. After the votes were tallied, either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party would be shattered, perhaps beyond recovery. Fortunately, for the sake and quite possibly the salvation of the republic, the Republicans were on the losing side.

            Its importance was not lost on a habitually apathetic public as more than 155 million voters either turned up at the polls or cast their ballots by mail, by far the biggest turnout in U.S. history. It troubles me that the election was as close as it was with loser Donald Trump garnering more than 74 million votes – more than any previous winner had received – because it left the nation more deeply divided than at any time before or since 13 Southern states attempted to secede from the union in 1861. Indeed, there was an insurrection in Washington as electoral votes were ready to be counted on January 6 that would officially confirm Democrat Joseph Biden as the new President when hundreds of Trump supporters, encouraged by the outgoing president, invaded the Capitol intent on halting the proceedings and bringing opposition politicians to their warped sense of justice while vandalizing and looting the edifice and causing five deaths and hundreds of injuries.

            This was an election the Democrats absolutely had to win. If they couldn’t unseat the worst and most corrupt President in history, their party no longer deserved to exist. However, characterizing them as a tight political party, even now, would be highly misleading. They remain more of a coalition with factions constantly fighting with each other to be better represented on the party’s platform, a loose confederation of liberals, socialists, moderates, and centrists who all believe the issues they champion should be the vanguard. It can be argued that Hillary Clinton would have beaten Trump in the battleground states she lost in 2016 if rabid supporters of avowed socialist Bernie Sanders and Black voters who had turned out in great numbers to elect Barack Obama had not sat on the sidelines. This time, fortunately, they were able to recognize the greater danger of another Trump administration and put aside their grievances long enough to galvanize and get Biden elected. But that doesn’t mean the truce will last. Already the factions are griping that their voices aren’t being heard by the new administration.

            The Achilles Heel of the Democratic Party is that it tries too hard to be all things to all people. This “big tent” approach does not work well, because a big tent stretched too far inevitably springs leaks at the seams. The Democrats are perceived as a party of wishy-washy pragmatists who bend in the direction of the wind instead of making a stand and establishing a firm identity. Democrats also believe their noble appeal to the intellect of citizens will ultimately prevail and are reluctant to get down in the mud and wrestle with their Republican rivals, who will resort to any lowdown trick to win and the truth and facts be damned.

            “Not to be overly anatomical about it,” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote last year, “but Democrats target the head while Republicans go for the heart and the gut.”

            The Republican Party is narrowly focused and tight … or at least it was until Trump lost. Republican legislators are willing to sell out and sell their souls to grab and retain power, even if it means tethering themselves to a despicable sociopath and unabashed liar who trampled all over the Constitution and has no respect for institutions, traditions, or even the people who voted for him.

            In a Rolling Stone interview last September, Trump’s disgraced former lawyer, Michael Cohen, said Trump “thinks of them as low class, basically pawns to be used for his benefit. Trump found his niche in speaking to them, and he’s exploiting it.”

            The Republican Party wasn’t always this way. It was even somewhat progressive before Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. Since then it has become progressively worse, shaping policy to benefit the wealthy, suppressing voter registration and turnout, employing misdirection and disinformation, and pandering to the electorate’s worst fears that culminated in Trump’s nomination. That he disgusted party leaders who were no strangers to mendacity leading up to Election Day in 2016 was all but forgotten when he won. The entire party fell into lockstep with him, and their voting record in Congress reflects it.

            The Trump administration was a virtual criminal enterprise, and his party did nothing to stop it. Twice he was impeached and acquitted, largely along party lines. There were a staggering 215 indictments of people working for or closely associated with his administration, 30 of them key personnel. It’s worth noting that there were 76 indictments of personnel in Richard Nixon’s administration, 26 during Reagan’s, and 16 while George W. Bush was in office. Compare that with the administrations of Jimmy Carter (1), Bill Clinton (2), and Obama (0). Yet the Republicans kept getting elected. To this day Trump, no longer in office, continues to find ways to rip off his loyal but blinded-by-fear supporters to the tune of millions of dollars.

            Ultimately Donald Trump brought the Republican Party to its Waterloo. Among his 30,000 documented lies or distortion of the facts while he was in office, the truth was spoken at least once when he said if mail-in ballots were allowed to become the preferred method of voting throughout the nation, Republicans would never win another national election. It’s a sentiment echoed by others in the party.

            Trump fractured the party, and gluing it back together again may be impossible. Polls indicate that as many as two-thirds of Republicans would bolt and swear their allegiance to Trump if he were disavowed by the leadership and decided to form a third party. In the not-so-distant past third party or independent Presidential candidates like John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader have siphoned far more votes from disenchanted Democrats than Republicans and perhaps cost them the Oval Office once or twice. In 2024 such a scenario would almost certainly render both the Republicans, historically the minority party in terms of registered voters, and a Trump-led splinter party hors de combat.

            Two days after the Capitol invasion, and to the horror of moderate and forward-thinking members, the Republican National Committee convened and reelected two Trump allies to chair and co-chair it. Many committee members had wanted to put Trump and the Tea Party behind them and steer it in a direction closer to the mainstream.

            “We are at a critical juncture,” admitted Bill Palatucci. “What’s our strategy for surviving and doing well in a post-Trump world? We don’t have a future as a party if we can’t win Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. It’s an important self-examination we need to go through to figure out how we do better, and it’s a waste of time to chalk it up to just saying ‘It was stolen from us.’”

            Retired Missouri Senator John Danforth, already deeply regretting having groomed Trump acolyte Josh Hawley for a seat in the Senate, said in a recent interview with PBS that “America needs a strong, responsible conservative party. That has been the Republican Party. It is neither strong, responsible, or conservative today. The worst thing is that we have become really kind of a grotesque caricature of what the Republican Party has traditionally been.”

            “If the GOP is to have a future outside the fever dreams of internet trolls,” warned Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, “we have to call out falsehoods and conspiracy theories unequivocally. We have to repudiate people who peddle those lies.”

            Michigan Congressman Paul Mitchell, who resigned his membership in the Republican Party after the election and declared himself an Independent, said if the party leaders “collectively sit back and tolerate unfounded conspiracy theories and ‘stop the steal’ rallies without speaking out for our electoral process – which the Department of Homeland Security said was the ‘most secure in American history’ – our nation will be damaged. I have spoken out clearly and forcefully in opposition to these messages. However, with the leadership of the Republican Party and our Republican Conference in the House actively participating in at least some of those efforts, I fear long-term harm to our democracy.”

            Added Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, “I think the final chapter of Donald Trump and where the Republican Party goes hasn’t been written yet, and I think we’re going to have a real battle for the soul of the Republican Party over the next couple of years.”

            It’s a battle they’re losing and losing badly. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in late February, Trump, in his first major public appearance since leaving the White House, drove a wedge even deeper into the cleft between him and Republicans who want to change the direction of the party. He characterized them as traitors and urged voters to throw them out of office when next they come up for reelection to Congress. The “grotesque caricature” Danforth spoke of actually took on a physical form when a golden statue of Trump was unveiled at the conference and conjured up visions of the biblical fatted golden calf, undoubtedly inflating his outsized ego to where he believes, after having already postured as a banana republic dictator by speaking to his supporters from a White House balcony during his final weeks in office, he is now a god.

            Chris Vance, the former chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, thinks he can read writing on the wall that the party is finished. What’s more, he believes that would be the best thing for the republic that is being torn apart.

            In an op-ed piece published in the Seattle Times in January, Vance wrote, “Instead of trying to hold it together, principled Republicans willing to put country before party need to encourage a split because a united Republican Party – led by Trump or someone like him – is the greatest threat to freedom and democracy that America faces. Splitting your voters leads to defeat,” he acknowledged. “But at some point principle must come before a desire to hold onto power.”

            Whether by choice or by fate, 40 years of mostly Republican rule – or whatever identity the fragmented party adopts to rebuild – are likely at an end for the foreseeable future. They misused it and abused it, put self-interests ahead of the country, and in the end followed the Pied Piper of Prevarication down the ruinous road to Waterloo. They could have stood up to him, reined him in, even thrown him out of office. But they didn’t. They can make Trump the scapegoat for their demise, but the Republicans brought all this on themselves.