Top GOP consultant Stuart Stevens has been watching in horror as his party implodes from within because Republicans refuse to abandon a criminal president who has proven himself time and time again to be an incompetent leader who does not embody true conservative values.
Senate Republicans continue to gamble their party’s future away by sticking with President Donald Trump despite the damning evidence and witness testimony that resulted in his impeachment. And they face a “day of reckoning” if they don’t abandon him soon while they still have a chance.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post on New Year’s Day, Stevens pointed out that Trump didn’t take control of the GOP as much as Republicans just willfully handed him the keys.
“Trump didn’t hijack the GOP and bend it to his will,” Stevens wrote. “He did something far easier: he looked at the party, saw its fault lines and then offered himself as a pure distillation of accumulated white grievance and anger. He bet that Republican voters didn’t really care about free trade or mutual security, or about the environment or Europe, much less deficits. He rebranded kindness and compassion as ‘PC’ and elevated division and bigotry as the admirable goals of just being politically incorrect.”
Trump pandered to the silent racists as well as the open racists, and united them to create a loyal rabid base that won’t turn their backs on him as long as he continues pandering to their bigotry, even if that means betraying everything else the party once stood for.
“Republicans are now officially the character doesn’t count party, the personal responsibility just proves you have failed to blame-the-other- guy party, the deficit-doesn’t-matter party, the Russia-is-our-ally-party, and the I’m-right-and-you-are-human-scum party,” Stevens continued. “Yes, it’s President Trump’s party now, but it stands only for what he has just tweeted.”
And because Senate Republicans are hell-bent on rigging the impending Senate impeachment trial in Trump’s favor rather than hold a fair trial, Stevens is warning that the party is only hastening their demise.
“This impeachment moment and all that has led to it should signal a day of reckoning,” Stevens concludes. “A party that has as its sole purpose the protection and promotion of its leader, whatever he thinks, is not on a sustainable path. Can anyone force a change? I’m not optimistic.”
Trump has a couple of Republican challengers in 2020, but the party is busy killing state primaries so Trump will go unchallenged. And so far, no Republicans in the House or the Senate are willing to stand up to him. The lack of spine is turning off a majority of Americans, particularly women in the suburbs, which hurts the party’s chances on Election Day in states Trump won by narrow margins in 2016, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Ohio.
Republicans may be maintaining base loyalty by sticking with Trump despite his disastrous presidency and corruption, but that’s not going to be enough to win in 2020. Only by dumping Trump now can they hope to regain any respect. Alas, it appears they are content with going down with the ship just to make some racists happy.
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