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Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), joined by other members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, unveiled a COVID-19 relief package last week on Capitol Hill.
There is a fair amount of wishful thinking about Republican legislators deserting Donald Trump. The signs are all around us of other Republicans distancing themselves from Trump—Reagan- and Bush-era alums, former military and intelligence officials, and of course the brilliant folks behind the Lincoln Project.
But GOP senators and members of the House are in no rush to undermine Trump. The reason is that the Republican base remains mostly Trumpian.
When a Ben Sasse makes disparaging comments about Trump in a phone call with supporters, it’s more about Sasse’s plans to be a possible contender to succeed Trump than a principled distancing from Trumpism. And when 25 Republican House members, with the tacit OK of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, join a Problem Solvers Caucus with 25 Democrats, it’s because they are in tight races in swing districts. It’s not because Republican legislators have been seized with an outbreak of moderation.
The fact is that Republican legislators have been all-too-willing enablers of Trump’s attempted march to dictatorship. They may find his coarse, narcissistic lunacy irritating and counterproductive, but that’s about tactics and not principles.
Face it, the Trump-era Republican Party and its legislators are a lost cause for all that’s decent. While Joe Biden may need to put a never-Trumper governor in his Cabinet for the sake of nominal bipartisanship, the only way to extirpate Trump and his toadies in Congress is to demolish them at the polls.
A new progressive centrism will emerge from Biden defining it, bringing the broad public to it, and implementing it Roosevelt-style, with Republicans kicking and screaming—not from bringing post-Trump Republicans around.
A post-Trump Eisenhower GOP is a lovely fantasy. The Trump Republican Party will have to die first.
