Republican Perfidy

Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s sole member of the House of Representatives and, so far, the number-three person in the Republican House leadership, recently wrote a blistering opinion piece in the Washington Post excoriating former President Trump and the overwhelming majority of the Republican lawmakers who refuse to break with the lie that Trump won the election.  She calls upon her party to “steer away from the dangerous … Trump cult of personality” with its crusade “to undermine the foundation of our democracy” by “revers[ing] the legal outcome of the last election.”

As punishment for insisting party members tell the truth, Cheney has already been censured by the Wyoming Republican Party and will almost certainly be stripped this week of her leadership position in the House and replaced by Trump acolyte New York’s previously-moderate, late-to-the-Trump-party Rep Elise Stefanik.  It appears that the litmus test for being a faithful Republican is no longer conservative political views but the willingness to maintain the lie that Trump won a fair election.  While I disagree with practically all of Liz Cheney’s conservative policy positions (she has voted with Trump 90% of the time), I deeply admire her integrity and courage in telling the truth despite the political risk.

I’ve been thinking and writing a lot lately (here, here, and here) about the Republican Party and predicting its coming demise.  I’m beginning to have second thoughts, though.  Within the congressional Republican caucus, only a select few have broken with Trump and they are being hounded out of the party.  Although opinion polls are not to be trusted this far ahead of an election, each poll I’ve seen has even the majority of rank-and-file Republicans still believing the lie that Trump won the elections.  

There was talk after Capitol insurrection that Republicans were leaving the party in significant numbers.  But now, four months after the events of Jan. 6 and three months after Trump’s second impeachment trial, the number of people changing their party affiliation in swing states has normalized, with relatively little overall shift.

Republicans are not, in fact, renouncing Trump or their party.  Little seems to have changed since the November election.

Given the narrow margin of the current Democratic majority in both House and Senate, the historical trend for the party in the White House to lose seats in the mid-term elections, and the continued support from the grassroots, pundits seem convinced that the Republicans will win the House in 2022 and perhaps the Senate, too.  

The Republicans I knew while living in a small Minnesota town were good people: sensible, hardworking and tolerant.  As difficult as I find it to believe, the statistical probability is that half of them must believe the Trump lie, too.  How could that be?  I don’t want to insult the intelligence of my friends, but I can see no other conclusion than that they have been duped by a polarized national media (eg Fox News) and the echo chamber of the Internet. 

Regardless of the cause, 8 in 10 Republican still support Trump, according to an Ipsos/Reuters poll.  Most of those still believe the lie, too.  Is it possible that the Republican Party will survive the debacle despite their commitment to the lie?  Tim Miller a former spokesman for Jeb Bush said that

The window for the Republican Party to distance itself from Trump seems to have passed. …. There was a chance after January 6 for Republican leaders to really put their foot down and say, “We can’t be the insurrectionist party.’” … Now that opportunity is totally gone.

“Republicans have their own version of reality.  It is a huge problem. Democracy requires accountability and accountability requires evidence,” said John Geer, an expert on public opinion.  Susan Corke of the Southern Poverty Law Center added. “That is the biggest danger – normalizing this behavior.  I do think we are going to see more violence.”

How does the American democracy withstand a political party that founds itself on a proven lie?  There are several possibilities for the future. 

• One possibility is that the 2024 election would return Trump (or an acolyte) to the presidency.  Given the inability (and unwillingness) of the Republican Party to control him, Trump would be unconstrained and the path to authoritarianism would be greased.
• Probably the most likely is that after the 2022 election Republicans will control either the House or both chambers of Congress and gridlock will worsen again.  This would give us at least a few years to restore the two-party democracy.
• Finally, it’s possible that given the contradictions within the party (including the increasingly stark divide between the Trumpists and the few remaining moderates) Republicans will implode within the next several years.  That would lead to Democratic control of government but make room for a true conservative party and eventually a return to a two-party system.

The last, or something like it, may be the only path to sustaining our democracy.