Why conservative elites are bailing on Trump now
Iâm not a historian, but I do know how to read history, and one of the things I have learned from that reading is that fascists around the world canât do what they want without the help of conservative elites. If they think demagogues like Donald Trump are just clowns they can control, the clowns win in the end. If they donât, however, they donât.
I donât know if we have arrived at a moment in which conservative elites have stopped giving Trump the full benefit of the doubt, but we are nonetheless seeing a number lining up against him â and not just the usual folks, like former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney. This month, former Vice President Mike Pence said he would not endorse Trump. He based that decision on explicitly conservative grounds.
No vice president has ever said his old running mate is undeserving of his support. His decision, moreover, follows a slew of former Trump administration officials who have openly criticized him or stayed mum. According to the Postâs Aaron Blake, only a third of his former cabinet members are aligned with him. Fewer have endorsed him. Some, like former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, have called him a security risk. Blake wrote that others are conspicuous by their absence, including Mick Mulvaney, Alex Azar, Betsy DeVos, Elaine Chao, Jeff Sessions and Rick Perry. Every single one is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.
If Pence is any indication, the breaking point may be Trumpâs attempt to overthrow the democratic will of the American people at the J6 insurrection. That was among the former vice presidentâs reasons. Trump had wanted him to reject swing-state electoral votes and send them back to legislatures controlled by the GOP. Pence denied he had that power, so Trump sent in a phalanx of paramilitaries to pressure him into doing as ordered. âHang Mike Pence,â they chanted. Mulvaney, Azar, DeVos and Chao all resigned in protest after the insurrection.
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Conservative elites might hold their noses and support Trump if he chose to move on from the insurrection, but he wonât. Heâs doubling down. His first rally after officially securing the Republican nomination was in Dayton, Ohio, last Saturday. According to the AP, Trump âstood onstage, his hand raised in salute to the brim of his red MAGA hat, as a recorded chorus of prisoners in jail for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack sang the national anthem. An announcer asked the crowd to please rise âfor the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages.â And people did, and sang along. âThey were unbelievable patriots,â Trump said as the recording ended. Having previously vowed to pardon the rioters, he promised to help them âthe first day we get into office.ââ
The J6 insurrection is now a âcornerstoneâ of Trumpâs campaign.
Violence, the threat of violence and his failed coup are the context for properly understanding comments Trump made at that rally. Hereâs ABC World News Tonight host Mary Bruce: âWe begin tonight with the race for the White House and former President Donald Trumpâs campaign now on the defensive after his fiery rhetoric at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday night. Trump warn[ed], while discussing the economy, that there would be a quote âbloodbathâ if heâs not reelected in November. This after the former president kicked off the event by paying tribute to those who attacked the US Capitol on January 6.â
Conservative elites might tolerate even that if they believed they could control Trump. But whatever hope there was in doing that almost certainly melted into the air after his takeover of the Republican Partyâs official fundraising arm, the Republican National Committee. Lara Trump is in charge, virtually guaranteeing that donations will be sent to her father-in-law, not to struggling down-ballot Republicans.
Donald Trump and the party are now completely melded. Thereâs no daylight between them. If he goes down, they all go down. That might be reason enough, if nothing else, for conservative elites to begin distancing themselves now. Pence and others could be anticipating a moment, post-election, when thereâs a huge power vacuum to fill in.
(Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House, was probably the last elite conservative to exert control over Trump when he convinced him, by stroking his immense ego, to sign off on a tax cut for the rich that ballooned the national debt by orders of magnitude. Now a private citizen, Ryan has also come out strongly against Trump.)
In the absence of control by conservative elites, Trumpâs weakness is increasingly on display. He has made anti-democratic violence a centerpiece of his White House bid. He has rejected solutions to issues heâs running on. (He blames Joe Biden for his âopen border policyâ but killed a bipartisan bill, via the House speaker, that would have built a border wall.) He was caught on a hot mic saying he wants to be Americaâs Kim Jong Un. He canât afford a half-billion-dollar bond in the business fraud case brought against him by New York state. So heâs bringing back Paul Manafort, who was convicted after Robert Muellerâs investigation of Russiaâs attack on the 2016 election. His presence on the campaign is an open invitation to foreign entities to bribe Trump.
For conservative elites, a clown like Trump was not a problem as long as the trains ran on time, to borrow a phrase from Mussolini â as long as he did not threaten, or actually undermine, the existing political order that enables conservative elites to maintain their elite status. His weakness seemed to suggest they could control him. But, as with all fascist clowns, it turned out to be the very thing that prevented them from controlling him. The existing political order is in danger of ruin. Some of them are sticking with him and hoping for the best in the future. Others, like Pence, are betting that the best is already past.
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