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When Donald
Trump ran for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in
2016, many top Republicans shunned him. Senator
Mitch McConnell
(R-KY) confidently explained how Trump was “not going to change
the platform of the Republican Party, the views of the Republican
Party… we’re much more likely to change him.” He
even admitted,
“it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t know a lot about
the issues.” McConnell alluded to Trump’s racism in vague
terms, saying, “I object to a whole series of things that he’s
said - vehemently object to them. I think all of that needs to stop…
these attacks on various ethnic groups in the country.”
But as soon as
Trump won the Electoral College and was declared the winner of the
2016 race, McConnell set to work to ensure he could make full use of
the newly elected president regardless of Trump’s continued
spouting off of dangerous lies and hateful claims. The Senate
majority leader was happy to see the seating of ultra-conservative
Supreme Court justices Neil
Gorsuch,
Brett
Kavanaugh,
and most recently Amy
Coney Barrett.
He went on an
unprecedented spree to remake the federal judiciary into one that is
dominated by white
conservative men,
young enough to reshape legal decisions for a generation. He pushed
through a massive
tax reform bill
that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, allowing almost no room
for debate over it. He ensured the Senate turned into a “legislative
graveyard,”
refusing to even consider hundreds of bills passed by the House of
Representatives, thereby ensuring that most policy changes during the
past four years were shaped by the president’s executive
action.
Three
years into Trump’s term, McConnell still had not had enough,
relishing the power that his position in the Senate gave him to enact
his conservative agenda. When the House impeached Trump in late 2019
over a clear
case
of corruption and abuse of power, McConnell led
the 2020 Senate acquittal of Donald Trump.
It matters little whether McConnell
admit Trump
was unfit for office a mere handful of days before the president’s
term ended. He used Trump for four years, subjecting the nation to a
mad, would-be-dictator, unhinged and unrepentant in his relentless
abuses. Senator McConnell owes the nation an explanation. Was it
worth it?
Although he is
the highest-ranking elected official to enable Trump, McConnell is
hardly alone among his Republican colleagues to have engaged in a
deal with the devil. The transformation of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)
from Trump critic to sycophant is even more dramatic.
In 2016 Cruz
criticized Trump more than any of his fellow lawmakers,
calling Trump “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this
country’s ever seen” and accurately saying Trump is “a
pathological liar.” He adeptly explained, “He doesn’t
know the difference between truth and lies… in a pattern that
is straight out of a psychology textbook, he accuses everyone of
lying.” It was a stunning piece of foresight into the next four
years of Trumpism. Cruz went further, saying, “Whatever lie
he’s telling, at that minute he believes it… the man is
utterly amoral… Donald is a bully… bullies don’t
come from strength; they come from weakness.”
Similar words
were uttered often during the past four years - by Democrats,
liberals, progressives, and the tiny handful of Trump’s
Republican critics. But once Trump held office, like McConnell,
Senator Cruz saw fit to make use of the “amoral”
president to suit his agenda, transforming himself into one of
Trump’s most ardent Senate loyalists. Seemingly forgetting his
scathing and accurate critiques of Trump, Cruz became a
MAGA-cheerleader, saying,
“President Trump is doing what he was elected to do: disrupt
the status quo… That scares the heck out of those who have
controlled Washington for decades, but for millions of Americans,
their confusion is great fun to watch.” In return for his
allegiance, Trump campaigned
for Cruz
in Texas during a tenuous Senate reelection battle, and Cruz returned
the favor by defending
him vehemently
during Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial.
Most recently,
Cruz led the push
to object to the 2020 election results. He repeatedly echoed Trump’s
demand to “stop
the steal,”
a slogan that became a rallying cry at the Capitol riot in
Washington, D.C., on January 6 that left at least five people dead.
Now Cruz
faces accusations
alongside Trump of fomenting an attempted coup and encouraging the
violent rioters. His aides are abandoning him, and the chair of the
House Committee on Homeland Security has recommended that he be
placed on the FBI’s “no-fly” list. Like McConnell,
Cruz owes the nation an explanation for his backing of a destructive
demagogue who has left the nation and its democratic institutions
battered and reeling. Has it all been worth it for the Texas senator?
Over the past
two decades, Republicans have developed a well-deserved reputation
for fighting by any means necessary in order to advance their agenda.
They have abandoned norms, traditions and ethical standards. They
have successfully retained power by rigging
the rules governing elections
and laid the groundwork of baseless assertions of “voter
fraud”
that Trump then built upon to claim he won the 2020 race. They have
led a cultural shift convincing
many Americans
that popular progressive policies are the dangerous ideas of the
“radical left,” and spawned
media outlets
that deliver lies and propaganda
to an unsuspecting base of voters.
After the
Capitol riot, an unnamed senior Trump official appeared
shell-shocked, saying to
a reporter,
“This is confirmation of so much that everyone has said for
years now - things that a lot of us thought were hyperbolic. We’d
say, ‘Trump’s not a fascist,’
or ‘He’s not a wannabe
dictator.’
Now, it’s like, ‘Well, what do you even say in response
to that now?’”
But this
late-breaking realization that many Republicans are expressing
publicly or feeling privately is not enough to absolve the dirty deal
that they made with Trump to further their agenda. The GOP and Trump
deserve one another and have maintained a symbiotic relationship that
has devastated the nation. Whether leading GOP figures like McConnell
now try to distance themselves from, or like Cruz, remain loyal to
him, is irrelevant. The party has lost credibility and is lying in a
bed of its own making.
They
have edged us far too close to the abyss, and like political parties
in other nations that have flirted with or enabled fascism,
Republicans need to answer for what they have done.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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