'Tribal loyalty': Writer says MAGA scandals show there's no limit to GOP's 'ghastliness'

Amid swirling scandals over North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins, a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College argued Thursday that the "limit for this kind of ghastliness does not seem to exist" for the GOP.

A damning CNN report linked Robinson, the state's gubernatorial candidate, to pro-slavery and pro-Nazi content on a porn site. Robinson has denied reporting that he posted comments on the site Nude Africa that he was a "black NAZI" who expressed appreciation for slavery and transgender pornography.

This week, Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, quietly deleted a social media post dubbing Haitians pet-eating "thugs" after the House's Black Caucus chair told him to take it down.

"These Haitians are wild," Higgins wrote. "Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters... but damned if they don't feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP."

The news caught the attention of Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic and professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 25 years, and an instructor at the Harvard Extension School.

Nichols wrote in The Atlantic on Thursday evening that his old party appears to have embraced a "consequence-free" attitude — something he, too, once felt aligned with, calling it "wistful thinking about not being too hard on yourself."

But he drew a stark line between himself and today's Republican Party.

"We were not daydreaming about how great it would be to fire off racial epithets or chest-thump about being Nazis," wrote Nichols.

"How quaint that seems now."

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Nichols argued the "racist" and offensive rhetoric uttered today by the party would've earned "disgracing and shunning" in the late 1990s. And Donald Trump, who has campaigned for eight years on telling it like it is, is the "poster boy for this juvenile insistence on a life without judgment or criticism," said Nichols.

"Trump has gotten away with this cowardly schtick for years, and he has built a following among Americans who take his hideous pronouncements as permission to be their worst selves. People now delight in shocking others the way toddlers who have learned their first swear words enjoy seeing the horror of adults around them," he added.

Nichols condemned Higgins' post and called him a "clever" "odious racist" who knows the party will continue to back him out of "tribal loyalty."

Unlike Higgins, Robinson will likely see consequences for his reported actions, despite his refusal to drop out of the race or resign his position.

Even so, Nichols posited that the duo's actions raise an imporant question: What it takes to be ostracized by the GOP and its voters.

"When does so much racism, misogyny, and xenophobia finally become so toxic that Republicans join with other decent people in rejecting such behavior?" he asked.

Nichols attempted to offer a himself an answer.

"Right now, the limit for this kind of ghastliness does not seem to exist. And that is a tragedy for what’s left of the GOP—as well as for the civic health of the world’s greatest democracy."