The ‘Trump-lican’ Party muted despite outrages

 

Bill Knight column for 10-12, 13 or 14

            Silence isn’t always golden. Sometimes it’s trash.

The day the FBI and Justice Department detailed domestic terrorists’ alleged plot to kidnap or kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the lack of outrage by “Trump-licans” was tragic.

“Outbreaks of political violence are a real threat,” wrote Dartmouth government professor Brendan Nyhan. “Every person of good faith in either party must speak up.”

Michigan GOP chair Laura Cox spoke up – criticizing Whitmer and her handling of pandemic safeguards, saying, “If Whitmer is looking for a threat to the jobs and safety of Michiganders, she needs to only look in the mirror.”

Such officeholders, bureaucrats and advisers need not confess complicity in a terror plan, but it would be nice, necessary and wholly reasonable to hear a full-throated expression of comfort, empathy and solidarity to Whitmer and of condemnations of violence.

But all’s quiet on the weasel front.

Surely, emperors themselves eventually realize they have no clothes, whether they’re schoolyard bullies, tin-pot dictators or authoritarian wannabes. Surely, at some point it dawns on them that they’re surrounded by cowering cowards who say what the tyrants want to hear instead of the truth. Surely, despots inevitably notice that the emphasis on feeding egos can have terrible consequences. It’s one thing to cheat at golf or marriage, but when conceit extends to a false notion of reality – from the numbers shown by a temperature thermometer or a bathroom scale, to statistics of the jobless, hungry and sick – people can suffer and die.

Most Americans who are regular Republicans aren’t extremists or racists, but Republican officials seem to be afraid of Trump’s minority “base” and even more of the threat of ridicule or abandonment by the Dear Leader.

So, they don’t dare defy the nonsense, even in the face of an embarrassing debate, his COVID infection, his taxes and finances, recorded revelations in “Rage,” false claims of voter fraud, stalling pandemic aid, disparaging soldiers and war dead while playing footsy with QAnon and white supremacists, and doing damage to the CDC, DHS, FDA, USPS, and other parts of his own administration.

True, there are a handful of incumbent exceptions, from Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger to Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. But most Republicans of good faith speaking up are out of office and freer to be frank. Almost 100 “Republicans and Independents for Biden” include former Illinois Congressman Ray LaHood, plus Mickey Edwards, Jeff Flake, Jim Leach, John Warner, Bill Weld and Christine Todd Whitman.

“The Lincoln Project,” founded by GOP operatives, blasts “the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans.” Other groups and hardy souls such as George W. Bush administration vets in “43 Alumni for Biden,” national security officials for Biden, retired military and scientists are outsiders looking in with dismay.

Other Republicans occasionally ashamed or even endorsing Joe Biden include Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and others with less to lose outside of the Washington merry-go-round: George W. Bush, John Kasich, John McCain’s widow Cindy, and Colin Powell. Powell, a former general and Secretary of State, blasted fellow Republicans, saying “They need to get a grip. This is not the way the country is supposed to run. The Constitution started with ‘we the people,’ not ‘me the President’.”

Pro-life conservative columnist Mona Charon recently wrote, “When you compare the state of the two major parties today, the Republicans are more frightening.”

The base, hovering between 35% and 40%, are loyal followers. A year ago, 62% of Trump supporters in a Monmouth University poll said there’s nothing Trump could do that would cause them to oppose him (echoing his 2016 comment, “I could shoot somebody in the middle of 5^th Avenue and not lose any voters”).

Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic detailed the most familiar excuses (we’re beyond accepting them as “explanations”). In a 14-page feature, she listed “justifications of collaborations” with the White House:

“We can use this moment to achieve great things; we can protect the country from the president; I, personally, will benefit; I must remain close to power; nothing matters (if the president doesn’t respect the Constitution, why should I?; my side might be flawed, but the political opposition is much worse; [and]  I am afraid to speak out.”

Too many Republicans still in office gave up civility and unity, principles and power for a few Supreme Court picks, a tax cut for the rich and the chance to keep their cushy jobs.

Surely, history will record what they said. Or failed to say.

Unless historians also are forced to bow and write what someone wants to hear.

It’s time for country over party. Democracy is in the balance.