thebulwark.com
TRUMPISM CORRUPTS
Burn It All Down?
The Senate Republicans who protected and enabled Trump have to be held accountable.
by CHARLES SYKES
JULY 27, 2020 5:30 AM
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Senate Republicans “have enabled Trump’s despicable behavior,” Matt K. Lewis writes over at the Daily Beast, “while doing nothing to mitigate his worst instincts. Rather than rising to the occasion, they instead buckled under pressure. They lacked both the courage and the character we should expect from our leaders. If Trump were a more competent authoritarian, their cowardice might have been lethal.”
But, writes Lewis: We should vote for them anyway. Six more years!
Let’s leave aside the question of whether the deaths of nearly 150,000 Americans can be considered a “lethal” consequence. Lewis is among the anti-Trump critics now warning against punishing the GOP too severely for its cowardice, lack of character, and submission to Trumpism. He is joined by David French, who is also “squarely in the camp that seeks to dump Trump but not to seek vengeance on the rest of the GOP”:
A rage, fury, and a “burn it all down” mentality is one of the maladies that brought us to the present moment. Repeating that same impulse, but with an entire party in the crosshairs, will only compound our political dysfunction.
French is likely referring to comments by the Lincoln Project’s Steve Schmidt, who argues that Never Trump conservatives should vote against Republicans up and down the ballot. “The analogy would be in the same way that fire purifies the forest, it needs to be burned to the ground and fundamentally repudiated,” Schmidt said. “Every one of them should be voted out of office, with the exception of Mitt Romney.”
Predictably, the legions of anti-anti-Trumpers are incensed, suggesting that this position makes Never Trumpers effectively Democrats. (As a class, the anti-anti-Trumpers may concede that the house is on fire, but are content to sit on the patio complaining about the fire extinguishers.)<snip> |
