Peak Republican Cowardice?
The question mark is for the peak, not for the cowardice.
I have often noted that we find ourselves in our current predicament because the Republican Party, and specifically then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, failed to take what would have been a relatively low-risk (politically speaking) opportunity to bar Trump from ever holding federal office during his second impeachment trial. Every Senator who voted to acquit that day owns a deep and historic level of responsibility for the chaos in the streets of Minneapolis, as well as the growing possibility of the rupture of the post-WWII global order over Greenland. I will reiterate that the lion’s share of the guilt and share for the party’s failure that day belongs on McConnell’s shoulders. I think he knew better but thought he could have his cake and eat it too, as he probably thought Trump was done politically, so why risk GOP backlash over a conviction vote?
The Republicans, as a collective actor, now find themselves at a pivot point over Trump’s reckless behavior regarding Greenland. I agree with The Atlantic‘s Anne Applebaum, Trump’s Letter to Norway Should Be the Last Straw.
Here’s the text:
Dear Jonas:
Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only a boat that landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT
Applebaum correctly assesses this thusly.
One could observe many things about this document. One is the childish grammar, including the strange capitalizations (“Complete and Total Control”). Another is the loose grasp of history. Donald Trump did not end eight wars. Greenland has been Danish territory for centuries. Its residents are Danish citizens who vote in Danish elections. There are many “written documents” establishing Danish sovereignty in Greenland, including some signed by the United States. In his second term, Trump has done nothing for NATO—an organization that the U.S. created and theoretically leads, and that has only ever been used in defense of American interests. If the European members of NATO have begun spending more on their own defense (budgets to which the U.S. never contributed), that’s because of the threat they feel from Russia.
Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.
This is all quite accurate. And she concludes with the following.
[This] leaves Republicans in Congress as the last barrier. They owe it to the American people, and to the world, to stop Trump from acting out his fantasy in Greenland and doing permanent damage to American interests. He is at risk of alienating friends in not only Europe but also India, whose leader he also snubbed for failing to nominate him for a Nobel Prize, as well as South Korea, Japan, Australia. Years of careful diplomacy, billions of dollars in trade, are now at risk because senators and representatives who know better have refused to use the powers they have to block him. Now is the time.
There is no argument here: apart from Trump himself simply deciding to stop and going the TACO route, there is no other actor in American government who can act in any decisive way, save the Republicans who control Congress. The president is poised to do significant long-term harm to US national security. If this isn’t a time for checks and balances, I don’t know what is.
I have no doubt that some GOP members of Congress are 100% onboard with Trump’s imperialistic stance towards Greenland, among other things. But it is difficult to believe that many members, especially in the Senate, don’t understand the massive risks associated with Trump’s behavior.
Yet they sit idly by and watch it all go by.
It is difficult to generate any hope of action, by the way, when retiring Senators are unwilling to speak out. To wit, Senator Tillis.
And,
Not that I am in the habit of putting much trust and hope in politicians, but the cowardice here is off the charts.
I often understand (intellectually, that is, not morally) the behavior of Republican politicians, as they are primarily motivated by re-election, and the nature of our electoral system places a lot of emphasis on the party’s base to retain seats. But Tillis has no such concerns. Moreover, he is 65 and, based on his bio, likely has plenty of money. And yet, he hedges.
Trump once bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. He is now testing that hypothesis on a grand and terrifying scale.
Here’s some stuff from Trump’s Truth Social feed on this topic. All perfectly normal, of course.
Note the flag on Venezuela. What is in his mind with that?
I hope the bond vigilantes get here soon.
Not all Republicans, apparently, it seems there are exceptions.
“TNR Gift”
When a headline asks a question….
They can always get more cowardly.
Take McConnell. Right after the impeachment vote, he pretty much said: El Taco is guilty of everything I voted to acquit him for. Later he indicated the Jan 6 insurrection could be dealt with in the courts.
That’s the problem: A lot of people want to see El Taco gone, but few are willing to do what’s necessary to make him go. They hope someone else will take care of the orange ass. And next thing you know, masked armed thugs ara running rampant and elections are suspended while El Taco takes hostile action against an ally.
Mike Johnson is a ride or die Trump loyalist (i.e., as part of his commitment to Christian Nationalism), but after next January an impeachment coming out of House will become possible. This would put every congresscritter, including GOP, on the spot, force them to take a stand or not.
Trump is decompensating and his dementia is progressing, he will keep outdoing himself getting worse and worse. Doing something about this will keep getting more and more urgent.
I know you all disagree, but I think by early 2028 (the start of campaign season) if not sooner, he will get removed.
@charontwo:
The sooner the better, though we’d be stuck with Vance, unless it was through impeachment and both were tossed. While there is a path to impeaching the felon, I don’t see any R’s looking to. send Vance along as well, given the Jeffers or another Dem would assume the presidency.
McConnell deserves an extraordinary amount of blame for how badly things are going. The Jan 6th impeachment was only the biggest in a long line of steps he took that effectively broke the Senate and thus Congress (Gingrich had already broken the House), removing it entirely as a check on the executive and judicial branches, and even making it almost useless legislatively (if you recall, his stated policy and behavior in the first years of the Obama presidency was to filibuster EVERYTHING, no matter how innocuous). He simply never put his country ahead of his party–in fact, I doubt he could perceive the difference.
And he would be completely happy to knife Trump in the back – as long as his fingerprints aren’t on the knife. That completely explains his comments and votes around Jan 6th and impeachment. Like so many other positions (cough, Supreme Court, cough) when this country needed courage and conviction in leadership positions during the Trump presidency, we had hopeless cowards and partisans.
What good will impeaching Trump next year do? Is there any evidence whatsoever that the 3rd time would be different? That Senate R’s wouldn’t chicken out again? That he and his brownshirts would even recognize a conviction anyway?
The only faint hope I have left for this country is that Trump dies very soon, and the movement rapidly splinters and collapses. But even then I’m not really optimistic. He has shown just how much a President can get away with, and now that the guardrails are down it’s only a matter of time before Trump or the next demagogue drives right off the road. America (and the world) are absolutely f*****.
I suspect a lot of them are scared.
Not just of the political consequnces of being primaried by MAGA.
But genuinely, physically, scared for themselves and their families of the consequences of crossing Trump.
I think there is some part of us that keeps expecting congressional Republicans to finally decide Trump has gone too far and to do something. I think we should have stopped expecting that a long time ago. We will get some vague indirect criticism sometimes. They will occasionally express some “concern”. However, they arent going to actually do anything. Even if, eg, only a minority of Republican voters oppose a military invasion and takeover of Greenland it’s not actually that important to them. It’s much more important that Trump “own the libs” and as part of that continue to get rid of the brown people they dont like while practicing maximum cruelty.
So I would certainly agree there is a lot of cowardice but it’s backed by these cowards actually carrying out the preferences of their voters.
Steve
@JohnSF: Back in W’s reign, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill dared to question the wisdom of cutting taxes while starting two wars. He was bounced out in a flash.
While I didn’t read The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind, Paul O’Neill refers to that administration as “very mean people” in that 2004 book.
The wingnuts have had 20+ years to toss out the reasonable and fill their seats with larcenious grifters and toadies. Lots of organized crime types providing muscle. And they don’t just threaten you, they threaten your family. Once you are in their claws, there’s no getting out unscathed. Just like the mafias, that no doubt had a hand in picking trump as their gop frontman.
Someone, somewhere, compared Trump to Idi Amin, the formidably stupid and barbaric defacer of Uganda back in the day.
Idi Amin vs. Greedy Amin
@JohnSF: Yes. I started giving that hypothesis significant weight last summer after some stories about the passage of the BBB came out. Lisa Murkowski sounded terrified. She didn’t like the bill, she got betrayed in the process of passage of the bill. And she sounded really scared.
Mitt Romney, earlier cited concerns about his family when asked why he hadn’t spoken out against Trump more strongly.
This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but these things are in the public record. I mean, if you read a description of what’s happening in the Twin Cities 18 months ago, it would sound like a crazy conspiracy theory maunder, right?
Trump (and the Sinister Six) have implicitly promised a permanent Republican majority at the federal level and a huge rollback of individual rights. Enough of the Congressional caucus either believe or are willing to risk their current majority on Trump delivering.
@JohnSF: @becca: @Jay L. Gischer:
I agree with the three of you. Trump himself wouldn’t represent any threat. But the crazed and vengeful of the MAGAs who worship him would.
@becca:
“Greedy Amin”….good one!
@steve222:
Agreed. Essentially El Taco is doing all the things the GQP has advocated for the past 20 years or so. They may get antsy about the idea of destroying alliances and empowering Russia and China, but maybe not enough to stop him.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
The only way it makes sense to impeach El Taco (and, not incidentally, a large part of his cabinet), is if by some kind of miracle Democrats win 67 seats in the Senate.
Well, it looks like the next big shoes to drop (assuming tonight’s unbelievable press confrence doesn’t move the Republican dial) will be from the Supreme Court, on tariff authority.
And also re the Fed.
If the Supremes curb Trump on tafiffs, does that take things off the boil re the confrontation with Europe?
Or will it just enrgage Trump into trying something really stupid with a military move?
Also: will Trump declare war on the world at Davos?
Or just start gibbering and shrieking from the podium?
More days, more fun and games.
*sighs* *sobs*
Incidentally, the European Parliament voted earlier today to halt approval of the US-EU trade deal
@becca:
I have long-standing suspicion that a lot of Trump’s circles have at least nodding connections with various salty dudes in the New York/New Jersey organized crime ecosystems.
And that that, along with possible foreign intelligence service connections, is a thread somebody needs to pull on re. Epstein and Maxwell.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
It’s reamrkable that McConnell (and Murdoch, for that matter) did not plunge the knife into Trump when they had the golden opportunity in 2021.
Just hoping Trump would somehow fade away was a massive miscalculation.
But was, it seems, too worried about splitting the remaining “establishment” GoP from MAGA.
Well, now the Republicans in Congess are even more firmly lashed to the shambling corpse of the Trumpenstein monster, as it wreaks havoc.
If they can’t find the nerve to sever their bonds at some point, the damage Trump inflicts on the US is also likely to wreck their party as well.
On grounds of pure self interest, failure to act in 2021 was a massive miscalculation.
Trump’s image trolling seems off to me. Seems crafted to outrage people more than sell the project to anyone, and if he is serious about Greenland he has to know he has a lot of selling to do on it. The Rs in Congress and the Senate are split, and badly split, on this issue.
Is Greenland a flo0d-the-zone tactic to keep Epstein out of the news?? I am becoming more and more open to the idea, which I had dismissed as unlikely.
@charontwo:
These are the same courageous Republicans who were going to stop the appointments of Hegseth, and Gabbard, and Kennedy, and Emil Bove … yet somehow they all got appointed anyway. But they wouldn’t stand for Matt Gaetz as Attorney General! And they threatened to pass a Venezuelan War Powers resolution until Trump yelled at two of them so they changed their vote. The guardrails held firm!
It’s a bit late to worry about Trump “doing permanent damage to American interests”. That horse is already out of the barn and over the horizon. What Americans need to understand now is that the longer Trump is allowed to push his totalitarian, imperialist agenda, the greater the investment many of his supporters will have made in it and the harder it will be to stop him.