The Sad Cowardice Of Republican Elected Officials Claiming In Public They're Going To Vote For Trump

MAGA Over America?

On Monday, longtime Wisconsin GOP propagandist, Charlie Sykes, today a NeverTrumper, wrote a column for MSNBC about why he has endorsed Kamala— not just announced that he’s not voting for Señor T, like so many Republicans have done. He doesn’t have anything nice to say about the Republicans that haven’t gone all the way in. “In Dante’s Inferno,” he wrote, “moral cowards aren’t even allowed into hell. They are the ‘sorry souls’ stuck in the vestibule where they are doomed to be forgotten. ‘The world will let no fame of theirs endure,’ Dante’s guide, Virgil, explains. ‘Let us not talk of them but look and pass.’” Sykes would rather call them out by name, many his former friends and allies: Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, George Bush, John Bolton, Bret Stephens— not to mention the ones who detest Trump but say they will hold their noses and vote for him anyway, like Chris Sununu and Nikki Haley.

He wrote that many of them are fully aware of what a danger Trump is but insist they “want to preserve their ‘relevance’ in the party; others clearly hope for Trump’s defeat, but want to keep their hands clean by staying above the fray and casting a write-in vote.”

Many on the right simply cannot shift their mindset and stop seeing this election as a more-or-less traditional choice between the right and the left. Yes, they say, Trump is deplorable and unfit, but Kamala Harris is a progressive. They cite her position on taxes, on guns, on the border, on transgender rights, the environment, business regulations and spending. 

But the newly minted pro-Harris conservatives recognize that this election isn’t about those things at all. They recognize that a second Trump term will transcend typical ideological/political differences. 

…This is the theme echoed by essentially all of the conservatives who have broken ranks: We may disagree on policy, but this is an emergency. And in every genuine crisis, people of goodwill put aside their differences. When the emergency passes, we can go back to arguing about other things; but right now, the moment demands that we make common cause, and put country over party. Even, and especially, if that means voting for Kamala Harris.

The next day, Sykes was writing that “We are talking about the possibility of the return to power of a convicted felon, a rapey seditionist who threatens to undo the constitutional order. There is nothing conservative about that. You’ve said this over and over again. It is not that you have left the Republican party or left conservativism. Conservatism has morphed into something that’s unrecognizable. You’re talking about somebody who kowtows to dictators, who wants to shred the constitution. This is one of those moments where you say, okay, I understand that you are not changing your conservative or centrist values. I understand that you disagree with Kamala Harris on a lot of different things. But there’s a moment where you have to put the country over party. I think that one of the closing arguments, one of the most powerful closing arguments that Kamala Harris has is to say, look at the people who have been in the Republican party, who have been conservative leaders. Whether it’s [former Trump Vice President] Mike Pence or whether it’s [Bush-era Vice President] Dick Cheney or whether it’s, you know, [former GOP congresswoman] Liz Cheney herself. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. All of these people who are looking at the Republican party under Donald Trump and saying, this is not who we are. As well as all of the people who worked with Donald Trump, who were in his cabinet, who were in his White House, who are saying, we saw him up close— the man is not fit for another term in office… And it’s not just the risk of Donald Trump, I also think it’s the question of do you really want to put America through this? Do you really want four more years of this? Do you really want someone back in power who has made it absolutely clear that he is off the charts of the normal American political difference? …You now have permission to do something that you probably would have thought unthinkable a few months ago.”

Tom Nichols noted yesterday that “The term ‘fascism’ has been so overused as a denunciation that many people have understandably tuned it out. But every American should be shocked to hear a presidential nominee say that other Americans (including a sitting member of Congress) are more dangerous than two nations pointing hundreds of nuclear warheads at America’s cities. During the Cold War, conservative members of the GOP would likely have labeled anyone saying such things as a ‘comsymp,’ a fellow traveler, or even a traitor. Indeed, one might expect that other Republicans would be horrified to hear such hatred directed at their fellow citizens and such comfort given to the nation’s enemies. Pretty to think so. But today’s Republican leaders are cowards, and some are even worse.” Worse? Yeah Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who Nichols absolutely shredded. Nor was Youngkin the only GOP elected he had harsh words for.

It’s not exactly a revelation that the Republican Party’s elected ranks have become a haven for cranks and opportunists, and sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference: When Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, talks about how “they” can control the weather, it’s hard to tell if she is just a kook, if she herself is an anti-semite, or if she is employing yet another anti-semitic trope because she knows that some of the MAGA base feasts on such garbage.

For someone like Greene, the difference doesn’t matter. She is ignorant. And she traffics in ignorance. Her constituents have rewarded her with a safe seat in Congress. But in the Trump era, the conceit all along has been that more responsible Republicans such as Youngkin are lurking in the background, keeping their heads down while quietly and competently doing the people’s business.

Americans should therefore watch Youngkin’s exchange with Tapper for themselves. They should see that supposedly competent Republicans have already abandoned the party. To believe otherwise— especially after watching someone like Youngkin— is to truly obey the commandment to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.