“Don’t expect the GOP to dump Trump”, The Boston Globe
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, October 26, 2017
“Big News — Budget just passed!” President Trump tweeted Thursday, after sharing this uncharacteristically sage nugget: “Do not underestimate the UNITY within the Republican Party.”
Trump is provably wrong about much in the fact-based universe, disgorging on average five false statements daily since taking office, according to the painstaking tally by long-suffering fact checkers. But don’t fool yourself into thinking he’s lying about one very important thing.
After passionate denunciations in the last week, by former president George W. Bush and three GOP senators, of Trump’s assault on truth, decency, and democracy, you might think there are cracks in his support. You would be wrong.
“I called it a love fest, it was almost a love fest. It was a love fest. Standing ovation . . . There’s great unity in the Republican Party,” Trump rambled of his lunch with Senate Republicans, and yes, there were ovations.
Trump is also deflecting attention from the Russia probe, Niger, Puerto Rico. The GOP message machine is behind him: House Republicans opened two new investigations into Hillary Clinton (remember that lady no longer running for president?) and Fox News is gleefully devoting prime time to weaponized disinformation in all-caps: “EXPOSED: DEMS & THE REAL RUSSIA CONNECTION”; “TRUMP: URANIUM SCANDAL JUST LIKE ‘WATERGATE’ ”; and “HILLARY’S RUSSIA SCANDAL.”
Trump’s disapproval ratings are near 60 percent, and majorities see the president as reckless, dishonest, uncompassionate, and unstable, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. What this obscures is that his support among Republicans remains strong; 77 percent of party faithful in the same poll approve of his performance. So it should come as no surprise their elected representatives do too. Thanks to redistricting, most come from reliably red districts.
Trump is absolutely right that there’s no cavalry coming after Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake’s cri de coeur on the Senate floor calling out “our complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs,” “flagrant disregard for truth and decency,” and behavior that’s “dangerous to a democracy.” In an op-ed, Flake compared the Trump era to the terrorizing reign of Senator Joe McCarthy.
Look no further than Trump’s interview with Fox Business on Wednesday for evidence of the slide to Trumpism. The president said he spoke to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and “congratulated him on his big victory.”
That “victory” was a rubber-stamp reappointment by the Community Party. Trump has made no secret of his admiration for authoritarian strongmen from Russia to the Philippines. Sounding more wistful than critical, Trump added of Xi, “Some people might call him the king of China.”
Like Flake, Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee has excoriated Trump as unfit for the presidency and referred to the White House as “adult day care.” Both senators were liberated to speak their minds by the truth-serum decision not to seek reelection. Trump wasn’t wrong when he said they had scant chance in states that have lurched toward the president’s vision of America. And his critics’ rejection goes only so far; both have backed Trump’s agenda in Congress.
Republicans ignore his uncivil discourse and threats to foundational principles of democracy so long as he’s their ticket to eyes-on-the-prize goals like lowering taxes on corporations and the rich.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made no secret of the sauce keeping the GOP together. “If there’s anything that unifies Republicans, it’s tax reform,” he said. “We’ve been looking for the opportunity to do this literally for years. We now have a president who will sign it. . . . [W]e’re going to concentrate on what our agenda is and not any of these other distractions.”
Don’t expect Republicans to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him anytime soon. As long as he serves their purposes, it’s party over country.