In 2020, writing for the New York Review, Ruth Ben-Ghiat warned how Trump coopted and corrupted Republican politicians and eventually the whole GOP itself turning into a “personalist” ruler's dream. “Politicians like Lindsey Graham,” she noted, need only contemplate the fate of their former peer, Jeff Sessions, to know what happens if they break ranks. This past week, Graham accompanied Trump to backward, reactionary Pickens County, a rural MAGA hellhole in South Carolina, Graham’s own state. Graham was one of the opening acts. He was roundly boo-ed and the boo-ing sustained. Later, when Trump took the stage, he said he keeps Graham around because he helps him get “liberal votes,” a little joke at the local senator’s expense. Perhaps the MAGAts were booing because they remembered this:
She was describing a cult: “In his relationship with Republican political elites,” she wrote, “as in other areas of endeavor, Trump has followed the model of ‘personalist rule’ used by leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Some of these rulers destroy democracy, and others, like the Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi, govern nominally open societies in undemocratic ways. Yet personalist rule always concentrates power in one individual whose own political and financial interests and private relationships with other despots often prevail over national interests in shaping domestic and foreign policy. Loyalty to this head of state and his allies, rather than expertise, is a primary qualification for serving him, whether as ministers or bureaucrats, as is participation in his corruption schemes… Enticing and intimidating individuals into becoming their worst selves is what authoritarians do best. On this count, Trump has succeeded magnificently.” She wrote this several months before Trump lost his reelection bid and failed in his coup attempt.
“Trump denied he had lost the presidential election, opening up a state of exception in American politics that put Republican politicians to the test.” Ben-Ghiat, like all of us, watched as the GOP as an entity failed that test. “Far from finding the courage to break with their cult leader,” she wrote this week, “party elites became even more submissive to his loyalty demands. That made them complicit in his attempts to overturn the election and incite a violent coup attempt on Jan. 6 to interrupt the peaceful transition of power. The GOP has been transformed by such cult dynamics, which dictate how party elites behave and what kinds of individuals find a foothold there. Day after day, we witness one of the largest political parties in the world remake itself as an autocratic entity, discarding the values, norms, and rituals of democracy.” And the the kinds of individuals who have found a foothold? QAnon Know Nothing sociopaths like Marjorie Traitor Greene and Lauren Boebert as well as scoundrels and rogues like Matt Gaetz, George Santos, Ronny Jackson…
“Authoritarians,” she wrote, “don't just hollow out democratic institutions, but also debase the meaning and the practice of politics, reducing it to lies, leader worship, and violence against enemies. That's why authoritarian parties become havens for a toxic mix of craven opportunists, racist bullies, and amoral individuals who are attracted by partnering with a leader who has no limits or restraints. Some of these politicians realize the leader is using them, but are too complicit with his crimes to exit the game. In saving him, they believe they can save themselves.”
Did you miss Matt Gaetz’s transition from pudgy, louchey, mainstream conservative into MAGA extremist just as his likely need for a presidential pardon on sex trafficking charges came front and center?
“Others,” she noted, “who share the leader's transactional mentality, understand that when political ideals have collapsed, being used and using others is the game. The behaviors of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. George Santos (R-NY) this past week exemplify these elements within today's GOP.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's spectacle of humiliation followed the authoritarian playbook faithfully. In an interview with CNBC, McCarthy stated that Trump could win the 2024 election, but he was not sure he could say that Trump would be the "strongest" candidate. "I don't know that answer."
As McCarthy discovered, two of these three statements are impermissible in the authoritarian world. Authoritarians always have to know the answer, and also know there is only one way to respond to such queries. You say whatever benefits the leader and increases his glory. How hard is that?
McCarthy also forgot the main rule of authoritarian cults: Never Criticize the Leader in Public. And so, a predictable cycle of events ensued. A phone call was placed, and an apology obtained for the act of disloyalty. And then the all-important public correction came, when McCarthy told Breitbart that Trump is "stronger today than he was in 2016."
Authoritarians "make an example" to enforce party discipline and show their "ownership" of party elites. It's a stunning testament to the strength of Trump's cult— and the weakness of McCarthy's character— that these dynamics are going strong years after Trump left office.
…McCarthy will be under pressure to perform as Trump grows more panicky about his indictment and the numerous other legal proceedings that could jeopardize his candidacy. And McCarthy will once again display his servile nature, in the fruitless hope that Trump may one day recognize his loyalty and reward him for it.
McCarthy's GOP colleague Santos has no such illusions. A pathological liar who was indicted months ago on federal charges of fraud and money laundering, Santos is now the subject of an investigation by the House Ethics Committee on conflict-of-interest, sexual misconduct, and other charges.
In other words, Santos is well suited to thrive in today's GOP. He is a perfect addition to a House in which one-third of Republican members are election deniers, meaning they refuse to recognize the results of fair and free elections and peddle a false reality to their constituents. Santos understands this "institutionalized lying" intuitively, and has no qualms about dissembling or defrauding people, given that he is a skilled practitioner of both.
Santos is correct in believing that his power to dissemble and his absence of morals are sought-after qualities in today's GOP. In an interview with CBS2 reporter Marcia Kramer, he presented the "notoriety" he has gained from being deceptive as an asset to his political career.
"A lot of people come to me for support for co-sponsorships because they know it'll get attention and they're trying to get their bill notoriety," Santos told Kramer, summing up well the glamour of rogue behavior among today's GOP politicians.
"Is there no bottom?" people ask as they witness each new violation of the rule of law and democratic norms. Yet it is precisely this absence of a bottom that allows individuals like Santos to find a place in the GOP. Long ago, Trump let it be known (including by pardoning criminals) that all forms of lawlessness would be rewarded as long loyalty and public adulation of the leader continued.
"At the heart of strongman rule is the claim that he and his agents are above the law, above judgment, and not beholden to the truth," I wrote in Strongmen in 2020. "In Trump’s America... the legal and the illegal, fact and fiction, celebrity and politics blend together until nothing means anything anymore and everything is 'a confidence game'." Three years later, this perfectly describes the GOP.
Alas, this hasn’t just perverted the Republican Party. Our country is increasingly a dysfunctional hellhole. In his Independence Day essay yesterday, July 4th: Mourning the America We Could Have Had, John Pavlovitz wrote that “Republicans understand the power of weaponized patriotism. (Saying that ‘we’ love America, while ‘they”’ clearly despise it.) It’s the go-to GOP trope. They know the way the Stars and Stripes are a cheap intoxicant to those who imagine America to be their sole property, those who feel slighted by a world while enjoying all of its perks, those continually needing an enemy to rail against and puff out their chests toward and give them purpose. Republicans have learned from the Evangelical Right how expressions of devotion to America are simultaneously coded war rhetoric: battle cries for white soldiers in the Army of the Lord, fighting an ever-encroaching foreign adversary who is breaching their borders and coming for their jobs and their children. They can say they love this nation, while betraying almost everything central to its beauty: diversity, plurality, equality— and the indoctrinated cult will lap it up because they need the story to be true… [The] Republican party is fully antithetical to America.”
They have planned, participated in, supported, and now fiercely defend a deadly terrorist attack on our Capitol designed to overturn a free and fair election, all to protect a traitorous, wannabe despot.
They have weaponized the highest court in our nation, rolling back decades of civil rights protections for our most vulnerable and undoing generations of activism in a single week.
They are relentlessly assaulting the opportunity for all Americans to participate in the electoral process by wielding a stacked court to erode voting rights of those they seek to literally cancel.
They are legislatively attacking women and LGBTQ people and people of color, in order to deny them full access to human and civil rights as citizens here.
They are doing everything in the power to withhold life, liberty, and happiness to all but the whitest and wealthiest among us.
We shouldn’t be singing right now, we should be grieving.
…We will be grieving, not because this country deserves better than this party and the amoral monster they idolize— but because right now it does deserve them; because we wish it to be something far greater than their ceremonial dog and pony patriotism and the phony pro-life Christianity they wear when it benefits them.
Crapper, You say Trump was elected for two reasons and only two reasons. Then you mention four, technically five. You and your troll team might try finding an English teacher who can diagram your sentences for you before you rub even more crap on your face than usual next time.
a long way to go to say we're a shithole. and it didn't even get down to the basic cause -- americans are about 50/50 pure evil and dumber than shit.
trump isn't the cause of this. he's the beneficiary. he waited until the nazi voting base was ready and jumped in to become their hitler -- a god incarnate who will restore white men to their rightful place atop the genetic pyramid, the same way hitler was god's chosen vessel to restore aryans to their rightful place atop the racial pile.
he was elected for two reasons and only two reasons:
1) nazi voters WANT their hitler, NEED their hitler and will do anything to get him.
2) democraps…