The Double Standard Driving GOP Dysfunction

Donald Trump has pilloried the GOP establishment but refuses to take any criticism.

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(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.)

 On Election Night, Donald Trump took to his post-truth social media platform,  Truth Social, to spin the results. His first utterance was to celebrate Republican Joe O’Dea’s loss in the U.S. Senate race in Colorado. “Joe O’Dea lost BIG!” Trump crowed. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” O’Dea had distanced himself from Trump during the campaign (and Trump attacked him for it). 

Soon after, Republican Don Bolduc lost his Senate bid in New Hampshire by nearly 10 points. In the primary, Bolduc embraced Trump’s nonsense about the 2020 election being stolen, and in return, Trump had endorsed him. But days after he secured the nomination, Bolduc reversed course, admitting the election wasn’t stolen. A couple weeks later, on a QAnon-friendly podcast, he backtracked. 

That’s not how Trump saw it. Trump declared that Bolduc lost because he “disavowed, after his big primary win, his long-standing stance on Election Fraud. … Had he stayed strong and true, he would have won, easily.” Bolduc squeaked through his primary with 1,867 votes. 

Trump would prefer that the GOP lose a Colorado Senate seat, if the alternative is electing a conservative Republican who isn’t a Trump lickspittle. Moreover, he believes, or at least wants Republicans to believe, that Bolduc would have won in New Hampshire if only he’d showed unwavering loyalty to the stolen election lie. 

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  1. Sampsoncrisp

    Trump will get to the primaries and the way they work (as in 2016) he will win because his supporters wimm outnumber those of his six competitors. If the primaries were A two person show maybe not. But that would take party discipline and the very unlikely event of multiple candidates dropping out early.

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    Honest Ape

    Donald Trump is a mass shooter.

    Remember when he said he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue, shoot somebody, and not lose any voters? Well, metaphorically speaking, he's shot a lot of somebody's over the last 6+ years and, just as he predicted, still has sufficient numbers remaining loyal to him despite all the harm he's done/doing.

    Maybe describing him as a mass shooter is a bit off target. Maybe it's better to describe him as a mass denier. Of reality. We don't utter the names of mass shooters after they've committed their atrocities, in part, because we don't want to give them the attention and recognition that they crave. As for the mass denier in our midst, what if we were to not mention his name ever again so that he doesn't get the attention and recognition that he craves?

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      DougCLE

      Maybe it’s better to describe him as a mass spectrometer, since he shows what individual Republicans are made of.

      (Oh, c’mon, that was a little bit funny.)

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      1. Tim IN

        You know the term "science joke" is an oxymoron, right? I kid. It was a little funny.

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  3. Pohl

    Why shilling for Mitch so much lately? He should have fought to convict Trump after impeachment. He is not a hero in this story.

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      DougCLE

      Last paragraph, first sentence.

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      1. Pohl

        Jonah’s been doing this long before Scott threw his hat in the ring. Mitch should have been at least metaphorically tossed aside by Never Trumpers long ago.

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          DougCLE

          Yeah, and long before Scott threw his hat in the ring, that sentence was still true. If not Mitch, then who?

          Love him or hate him, El Cocaína is a shrewd politician who has the best interests of his party at heart. (And to anyone who would say he should put the best interests of his *country* at heart, I would respond that that's what *Senator* MM should do. Leader MM's concern is the party that elected him.) Even when I disagree with McConnell, I respect him, and I don't always disagree with him. Failing to remove Trump was a whiff, no question, but his batting average is still pretty good. Anyone who replaced him, in today's GOP, would be less effective, more MAGA, or both.

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          1. Pohl

            That’s probably true. My point is that the pundits here don’t need to be his boosters is all. His position is secure without their falling over themselves in admiration that he is the “grownup” in the room. Feh.

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  4. P Satter

    Good article. "It's not just that Trump doesn't care about what's good for the party...it's that he wants the GOP to embrace strategies that affirmatively hurt Republican candidates."
    Pardon the analogy from literature, but it's to Captain Ahab. Changing the reality of having lost the 2020 election is his White Whale. In other words, Trump would rather take the whole Pequod of the Republican Party to the bottom of the sea than give up his quest for declaring himself a perpetual winner.

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    Ghughes7791

    We will never be done talking about Trump. This is so depressing. Instead of R's being in control of Congress, we are now staring down the barrel of the BS "Respect For Marriage Act" and we are powerless to stop it. Proper leadership is an unalloyed good. Decent and proper candidates is an unalloyed good. It is pathetic that we are in these current state of affairs. And the only thing we have to look forward to is another two years of this crap.Trump this and Trump that. I wish he would get hit by a bus. I weep for the future.

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  6. Dan A.

    I really doubt the GOP will get rid of Trump. The GOP as a whole is far more MAGA-y now than it was in 2015/16. The anti-Trump voters are by and large not in the GOP anymore. The vast majority of these GOP primary voters fully supported Trump *twice*. Are they really going to buck him now?

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      DougCLE

      Unless he gets to serve his final term. Hey, that could be his campaign slogan: “Trump 2024 - The Only Way Out Is Through.”

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    John Kramer

    The "one-way civility"? It's just a bullying dynamic. No more, no less.

    MAGA devotees are just like those kids that hang on to the school bully's coat tails, revelling in his cruelty; knowing that they must flatter the bully at all times to ensure that the cruelty isn't turned on them.

    God help America that tens of millions are good with that.

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  8. Donnybrook

    Mary Shelley wrote a book about this.

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      Pat @ Tavi Hall

      Hell no, Shelley's monster read Milton, I doubt trump's read a book.

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    George.Skinner

    Trump and his flying monkeys really have 2 options: admit that they ARE the Republican establishment and deal with the responsibility that comes with it, or admit that they're the "Republicans In Name Only." They won't see it that way, and will refuse to do either, but that's reality. They're in the position of a squirrel sitting in the middle of the road. Run to one side or the other and there's options and dangers. Petulantly sit in the middle of the road and insist it's fine, and they're going to get flattened.

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      Mudskipper

      If they are like the squirrels in my neck of the woods, first they'll run to one side of the road, change their minds and then run to other, and just as you think they are out of danger and you start driving again, they'll turn once more and head directly under your tires.

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  10. J. Everett Schubert

    I'd really, really like to believe that this is The Donald's last stand, his Waterloo. That spring 2024 will come, and DeSantis will prevail in IA and NH, then as the weeks go on, it becomes exceedingly obvious that the GOP has spoken, and has chosen a new path for the future.

    I will say, from my perspective as a conservative millennial (and contrary to popular observations, yes, there are a lot of us.), that "Trump mania" seems to be a rare phenomenon among younger voters. I won't say that there aren't ANY hardcore Trump fans in my age cohort, but they are few. If I had to quantify it, I'd say most conservatives under 50 or so, while they may have voted for him in 16' and 20', their support was purely transactional, nothing personal. If a better option comes along, a la DeSantis, they'll jettison Trump in a heartbeat and set up camp elsewhere.

    No, the vast majority of the hardcore Trump fans, those who actually love Trump for Trump and don't feel conflicted about it, those who were and are fully on board with Stop the Steal, these voters are usually Silent Gen'ers, Boomers, and maybe the older Gen X'ers. You know the ones. Everybody has that crazy Uncle Larry or Aunt Martha who posts 20 articles a day on Facebook from Breitbart or the Epoch Times, mixed in with the long missives that end with "Copy and paste if you agree!" (By the way, I can usually spot these posts after just a sentence or two, because I usually conclude that there's no way this person actually wrote that post. The grammar, spelling, and sentence structure is too good.)

    And it's the latter group that worries me when it comes to the prospect of a Trump 2.0 nomination. Any older readers who may be reading this, please don't take this the wrong way, because if you're subscribed to The Dispatch, there's an excellent chance that you're not the ones I'm talking about.

    But I just fear that there are simply too many retired, cranky Boomers and Silent Gen'ers who spend all day watching Fox News or OANN, yelling at their televisions to expect anything less than a Trump re-nomination. They have been completely brainwashed by this man and his media water-carriers. Their brains have been rewired from the way they were in the Before Times.

    74 million voted for Trump in 2020. If 90 percent of them conclude, "You know what? You're right. There is a better way" and only 10 percent are determined to stick with their idol to the bitter end, that's still 7.4 million voters.

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    1. Bobby D

      Good point on the angry Boomer observation. I’ve often wondered why this demographic embraces Trump with such irrational fealty. I think it’s because he harkens back to a whiter, less diverse America that they remember from their childhoods. They don’t embrace him despite his soft-core racism; they embrace him because of it.

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      1. Mark Anderson

        The lives of the working class have been in decline since 1970. The "deaths of despair" among working class Boomers (the majority of Boomers) have driven U.S. life expectancy backwards. Trump doesn't care, of course, but he knows how to work the resentments of the millions of individuals--the deplorables--whose bitter resentment at being abandoned is explained away as ingrained racism.

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        1. Bobby D

          That’s true, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. Their economic decline is at least partly due to the fact that they started prioritizing social and cultural issues over economic issues. When you indicate that stopping affirmative action matters more to you than whether the local factory shuts down, you can’t be too surprised when the guy you elected doesn’t fight for your economic interests.

          This bloc of voters let their social and cultural prejudices get the best of them. Now that the political system has given them a measure what they demanded, they want to hit the do-over button on the past 30 years. I suspect that Trump’s appeal is that he’s selling a narrative that absolves these voters of any personal responsibility for what’s transpired in their communities. He tells them that it was possible for them to have their cake and eat it too: The reason why the cake is gone is because “the elites” stole it, not because you ate it.

          So, I agree that economic dissatisfaction probably plays a greater immediate role in why these voters like Trump. But that issue is intimately tied to their resistance to social and cultural changes.

          Through the 1960s, working-class whites (WCWs) were a big enough demographic that they could essentially have a competitive political party to themselves. But, as a higher share of whites entered the professional classes and non-whites became a bigger share of the electorate, the Democrats were forced to make trade-offs to remain competitive. These voters resisted this reality and made some choices whose consequences they now dislike. Then Trump comes along with a nostalgic narrative in which such trade-offs were never necessary and “real America” had its birthright stolen from it by people who now need to be punished. Sure, it’s a complete lie. But it’s a lie that WCWs want to believe.

          I’m sorry that this was a bit long. It was my attempt to make a bit more sense out of Trump cultishness among this demographic. Thinking through this has made me a bit more sympathetic to the plight of the Trump voter.

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          1. Mark Anderson

            Thanks for responding, Bobby D. Your points are well made. Looking forward to see you again.

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            Bayesian

            If you would like to read something a bit long that goes into greater detail, try this

            "The Declining Leverage and Status of Ordinary People":
            https://brinklindsey.substack.com/p/the-declining-leverage-and-status

            Brink Lindsey is a liberaltarian economist - used to be at Cato, now at Niskanen.

            TL:DR is this money graf:

            "In my view, the fundamental reason for the inegalitarian turn — not just in the United States, but throughout the advanced economies — was a qualitative downward shift in the leverage and status of ordinary people. The contributions that ordinary workers are able to make to the organized division of labor are simply less important than they used to be, and as a result those workers and their families have suffered a loss of collective power and a decline in social status."

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      Cogitatio

      "his Waterloo"

      Personally, I would prefer that it be his Little Big Horn.

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      Anne W (Raw5254)

      I’m a Boomer, and even I agree with you! I know several in my age group who not only support Trump, but are also into the whole Q Anon thing (a couple of them are bats**t crazy IMO)!! It’s honestly hard to describe my disappointment and disbelief.

      One friend thought he did a wonderful job as president, but thought it was time for him to go. I want to say to her, “he got lucky” in most cases. The things that went well for him were a combination of timing (the economy was good, and not because of him; he just missed the worst of Covid during his term, and therefore, he wasn’t touched by an economic downturn that was going to happen no matter what); or he actually took some advice from people who knew what they were doing.

      I really hate that guy.

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    4. Dan P.

      I'm right there with you demographically. Born in the early 80s, a Xennial if you will (on the Gen X/millennial dividing line). I voted for Trump--with reservations--twice, 3x if you count the obligatory vote in the '20 primary. But after his various post-election antics covering a variety of areas, I don't intend to ever give him another vote, even if he is the '24 nominee.

      I do think a lot of X & Boomer voters, though, fit into the category of not being a big fan but sticking with him because they feel he's better than a Dem. I've been having this conversation with my mom. She says she doesn't think it's good for the Republican Party that Trump is running, but plans to vote for him if he is the nominee and says, "The country was better off when he was president." I've been open with her about my feelings/plans, and at least she hasn't disowned me. I just hope she can be persuaded to vote for DeSantis or whoever seems to be the best chance to dethrone Trump in the primary. I think she's there, though some of her other votes in the past make me wonder.

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