Why the GOP Establishment Cannot Save the GOP From Trump

By David Corn  December 10, 2022

Donald Trump announcing he’s running for president for the third time, at Mar-a-Lago on November 15, 2022. Andrew Harnik/AP

Please stop. Enough with this talk of whether the Republican Party will finally rid itself of Donald Trump. Drop this speculation that the GOP, due to its poor performance in the midterm elections or Trump’s latest outrage (dining with a Nazi, calling for the “termination” of the US Constitution, or whatever), will pull the plug on him. You can call on Republicans to take a courageous stand of principle against Dear Leader—and, of course, they should—but don’t do so expecting that will have any impact on Trump’s standing and his future prospects. The party cannot de-Trumpify by decree. Rep. Kevin McCarthy cannot lead it out of the Trump nightmare. That’s because there is no governing power within the GOP that can push a button and execute a no-Trump reboot. There is no central committee that can make such a decision. It’s up to Republican voters, and many of them remain crazed for Trump. Hey, this is a democracy.

I’ll pursue this point further in a moment. First let me say that I almost—almost!—feel sorry for those conservatives who these days are exhorting the Republican Party to get over Trump. A few days ago, Charles C.W. Cooke, a senior writer for the conservative National Review, reacting to Trump’s phony claim that he had not truly called for tearing up the Constitution, penned a plea titled “Aren’t You All Tired of This Crap?” It seemed to address conservatives and Republicans who have stood by Trump. He wrote:

[F]or some reason, the American Right has decided to spend an inordinate amount of it defending a man who is now serving nothing except for his own boredom and his own ego. At some point, conservative-leaning voters are going to notice that all Trump cares about now is the pretense that he won the election of 2020, and that, in order to push that idea, he will happily destroy anything and everything that gets in his way. Until then, I must ask: Are you not tired of this crap?

In his newsletter, conservative commentator Erick Erickson beseeched Republicans and fellow rightists, “Can we move forward, please?” His advice: “You want to win? Move on from an angry old man with nothing left but a knockoff Twitter feed.”

Trump is a wannabe-autocrat who is a menace—to the nation and to the Republican Party. He has now led the GOP to three lousy elections, in which he lost the House, the Senate, and the White House. (The Rs barely won back the House last month in a historical underperformance.) And while he has generated political failure, he has further caused the party problems by hobnobbing with hate-spreading extremists, embracing QAnon nuttery, and vowing to pardon January 6 rioters (that is, excusing political violence). There’s plenty of cause for party leaders and prominent right-wingers to turn against The Former Guy, including realpolitik calculations.

Yet doing so will not rescue the party—not in and of itself. In the olden days, the party establishment might have been able to gather in a smoke-filled room and bounce a candidate they deemed unpalatable. That was largely because Republican voters, more often than not, followed the lead of the party poohbahs. They tended to vote as the party’s elders wanted. There weren’t too many surprises in presidential primaries. George H.W. Bush won when it was his turn in 1988, ditto Bob Dole (1996), George W. Bush (2000), John McCain (2008), and Mitt Romney (2012).

Trump broke that streak in 2016. This came after the party’s electorate had been radicalized by years of hateful rhetoric that demonized Democrats and liberals from Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Fox News, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and the Tea Party. Having been fed a steady diet of red meat, grievance, and conspiracy theories, Republican voters gave their own party the finger in 2016, rejecting all its mainstream candidates (even far-right contenders like Ted Cruz) and anointed Trump Mr. Republican. They took the wheel.

And they haven’t given it back.

In GOP primary contests throughout 2022, Republican voters picked Trump-endorsed extremists and election deniers over sane and better-bet candidates. In recent days, Trump has deservedly received criticism for having pushed lousy candidates, including Dr. Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, Blake Masters and Kari Lake in Arizona, and—drumroll, please—Herschel Walker in Georgia. But it was Republican voters who voted for these wingnuts and (eventual) losers. In Wyoming, they sent diehard conservative Liz Cheney packing. Trump foisted, but the base embraced. Just as the party’s leaders could not keep these aspirants off the train, they can’t toss Trump from the locomotive.

Were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to take to the well of the Senate and deliver a powerful speech denouncing Trump and urging the party to cast him on to the ash heap of history—were he to be joined in that endeavor by dozens of other elected Republicans—that would not guarantee the defenestration of Trump. Trump would respond with a Defcon-1 political attack on these RINOs and apostates and urge millions of Republicans to stand with him against these establishment sellouts. And the voters would get to decide. (Meanwhile, Trump presumably would maintain a lock on many of the low-dollar donors the party continually hits up for money. Breaking with Trump could cost the GOP a lot of cash.)

Though Walker lost and the House Republicans fared less well than expected—largely because some suburban GOP-ish voters have soured on the party—there are no signs that the GOP base, which supported Walker and the other Trumpish candidates, has had a change in heart. That base is not big enough to elect the most extreme candidates in statewide elections. But it can still call the shots in defining the party and in picking its banner carriers.

The conservative movement and the GOP have done too good a job stoking the fears, paranoia, resentments, and hatreds of the Republican electorate. They have generally not pushed back against election denialism nor decried the Trumpian threat to democracy. They have signaled to Republican voters that Trump’s baseless claims are legitimate, that advocating such allegations is not a disqualification for Republican candidates, and that the January 6 insurrection Trump incited was no big deal. (They opposed Trump’s impeachment.) They have bolstered (or not actively challenged) the irrationality and animosity that fuels many Republican voters, and they are stuck with these voters.

Heartfelt pleas—Aren’t you tired of this? Can’t we move on from Trump?—are unlikely to cut it. For the past six years, the party and the right wing have characterized all criticisms of Trump as unpatriotic attacks on America and hoaxes cooked up by a diabolical cabal of liberals, the media, and the Deep State. Stealing documents, tax fraud, conspiring to commit election fraud—it’s all a setup, a partisan attack. Now they expect their voters to believe otherwise? Just because of a few lost elections? Good luck with that.

It's possible GOP voters might tire of Trump or reach the conclusion he’s too damaged (too indicted?) to win in 2024 and, during the primaries, turn toward another Trumpish choice. That is, if any Republican with a chance chooses to challenge Trump. (I’m not talking Cheney or Larry Hogan.) But GOP insiders and elected leaders are unlikely to mount any rebellion against Trump. Even if a gutsy Republican leader—or a band of Republicans—took a stab at defying Trump and steering the party away from Trumpism, the odds of success would be small. The GOP is now dependent on Americans who have been convinced by the right—including folks like Erickson and writers at National Review, even those who are anti-Trump—that liberals and Democrats are an evil and existential threat to the nation and that Trump’s lies and his assaults on democracy are no big whoop. Many of these grievance-fueled people—who still believe Joe Biden is not the legitimate president, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and that Democrats are woke pedophiles plotting to destroy the nation—are not asking to be liberated from Trump. The harsh reality for Republicans—and the rest of us—is that you can’t save a party if its voters do not want to be saved.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

Michael Pertschuk, Thank You and RIP

You may be alive because of a fellow you’ve never heard of.

Washington is full of devoted public servants who do much to assist and protect the public. These people are rarely recognized or even known. Michael Pertschuk was one such person. He was for many years a fierce and joyful consumer advocate who worked first on Capitol Hill and later at the Federal Trade Commission, where he served as chairman during the Jimmy Carter years. He mounted titanic battles against Big Tobacco, the auto industry, and other corporate behemoths who put profit ahead of safety. And he often won. He made it harder for industries to endanger Americans.

I knew Pertschuk, who died last month at the age of 89. He was occasionally a source in his post-government years, an enthusiastic champion of the public interest who never lost his passion for doing good and thwarting the powerful. There are many people in the nation’s capital dedicated to making the federal bureaucracy work for the citizenry. They strive to keep our water and air clean, our environments free of pollutants and carcinogens, our food, prescription drugs, workplaces, and transportation systems safe, our federal lands protected. Though politicians and others often deride those who toil inside the Beltway, these people are unsung heroes. There are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of them, perhaps more. Pertschuk represented the epitome of this class.

Here’s the start of the New York Times obituary for him:

Few people outside Washington had ever heard of the consumer advocate Michael Pertschuk by the mid-1970s, but he was considered so influential in Congress that friends and foes alike anointed him “the 101st senator,” and the cigarette maker Philip Morris proclaimed him the company’s “number one enemy.”

While he never held elective public office, Mr. Pertschuk occupied, as The Washington Post wrote in 1977, “the top stratum of an invisible network of staff power and influence in the Senate, with impact on the life of every citizen of the United States.”

Probably more than any other individual, he was responsible for the government’s placing warning labels on cigarettes, banning tobacco advertising from television and radio, requiring seatbelts in cars and putting in place other consumer protections — all by helping to draft those measures into law as the chief counsel and staff director of the Senate Commerce Committee and later as the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Jimmy Carter.

Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told the Times, “Few have done more to reduce tobacco use in the United States and to galvanize and empower the tobacco control movement than Mike Pertschuk.” In the Washington Post obit, Joan Claybrook, a former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an agency created by legislation pushed by Pertschuk, referred to the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, a law Pertschuk helped enact in the 1960s that created safety standards for cars, and said, “The number of lives that have been saved as a result of that law are incredible—millions and millions of lives.” Maybe one of them was yours. 

Dumbass Comment of the Week

The judges didn’t have a lot of time for stupidity this week. Of course, the worst utterance came from Donald Trump, who called for torching the Constitution so he could be installed as president.

This was arguably the most explicit expression of Trump’s authoritarian desires, a truly dangerous remark. I’ve written about how the major media did not give this comment sufficient attention and that they need to reassess how to cover Trump’s war on American democracy. You can read that article here.

Predictably, there was the usual kerfuffle, with GOP officials flopping about, as they attempted to respond to Trump’s urging of what some might call dictatorship. Sen. Republican leader Mitch McConnell was one of the biggest floppers. He did not fully denounce Trump for this remark. Instead, he huffed, "Anyone seeking the presidency who thinks that the Constitution could somehow be suspended or not followed, it seems to me would have a very hard time being sworn in as president of the United States."

That’s more of a prediction than a renunciation. Remember that McConnell is on record saying that he will support Trump if Trump becomes the GOP presidential nominee in 2024. Asked by reporters if he remained committed to this, McConnell refused to answer the question. Not even a full-scale Trump attack on the Constitution can cause McConnell to break with the man who routinely insults him and his wife.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), a leading election denier, had a different response. Four days—count ’em, four!—after Trump called for ripping apart the Constitution, after other Republicans had issued mealy-mouthed statements distancing themselves from the comment (though not from Trump), Gosar decided it was time to give Trump-the-Constitution-Destroyer a big ol’ bear hug. He posted Trump’s comment in a tweet and added, “I support and agree with the former president. Unprecedented fraud requires unprecedented cure.” Whoa. An all-out endorsement of killing the Constitution. Even after Republicans had run away from the remark and Trump himself had absurdly claimed that he had not called for terminating the nation’s founding document, Gosar was out there waving the flag of Trump authoritarianism. Hours later, though, Gosar deleted the tweet, and a spokesperson for the congressman said, “He is known as a strict constitutionalist for good reason.” As Our Land readers know, deletions do not remove you from contention for Dumbass Comment of the Week. Nice try, congressman. You still win.

The Mailbag

Readers seemed appreciative of my effort to provide the full and slightly complicated backstory for the Elon Musk–backed disinformation campaign that claims the US government, Twitter, the media, and other dark forces conspired in 2020 to smother the Hunter Biden laptop story in order to help Joe Biden win the election. Craig Allen Jones wrote:

Fantastic timeline review and correction of events—too bad it can’t be condensed into 140 characters that Twitter users can read. I am a long fan of your ability to weave the truth from the maelstrom of disinformation, you are an American treasure.

Thanks, Craig. The goal of this disinformation effort—and others—is to present big and outlandish charges outside of their contexts and amplify innuendo so its assertions cannot be easily debunked by a single tweet. As you can tell from that piece, it took a fair amount of information to provide the necessary context, which included the fact that the Hunter Biden laptop story emerged adjacent to (or as part of) a Russian operation to discredit Joe Biden and help Trump win reelection. Lies are often simpler than the truth, and that can give them the advantage. 

Robert and Elaine Fleck emailed:

This article is something that should be plastered all over the lamp posts and all the media of the world. This is what the people should know about. I am so happy to support Mother Jones and especially you for your clear-eyed journalism. We’ve never sent an email like this before but this one deserves it.

I’m not sure lamp posts are the best dissemination method anymore. Though the article did receive attention, I wonder how Twitter’s Musky algorithms treated it.

Sandy Knauer had a question:

It might be the most significant writing I have read in a long time…My question is not really for you but it never leaves my mind completely, so I am voicing it here. Full disclosure: I adore (no exaggeration) Barack Obama. He knew about the Russian interference, and I believe that McConnell threatened him. But I am still disappointed that he didn't scream the warning before that election. Would it have made a difference? Was there anything he could have done?

Michael Isikoff and I looked at that in our book Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. It’s a bit of a complex tale. But I do believe that the Obama administration, to an extent, failed. They knew that the Kremlin was attacking the 2016 election to help Trump and did not stop that operation from succeeding. Obama and his aides say they were more concerned that Moscow would assault the actual electoral system to cause chaos on Election Day and that they prevented this. Which is true. Nevertheless, Putin achieved his aim: Trump in the White House. Russia’s hack-and-leak operation—an act of information warfare—worked. The Obama White House realized it was happening and did not thwart it. This was a consequential failure.

Harry Freiberg had a different question:

Given that I’m “old” (78), don’t tweet or participate in similar activities, and tend to be an unconverted ‘60s liberal, why should I care about Musk/Twitter? Given that Musk has turned Twitter into a cesspool, how does this really affect the national psyche, politics, etc. How many readers/participants does Musk’s Twitter have vis a vis pre-Musk Twitter? And, why would Musk’s readers/participants matter? 

Twitter has about 200 million users. Many of them are denizens of the political media world. Consequently, it has become an important forum for politics, activism, and civic life. There’s a joke that Twitter users need to be reminded that Twitter is not reality. That’s true. But Twitter is where ideas—good and bad—are generated and debated. It is also where many Americans receive their news—and where many Americans are targeted by disinformation. So even if you don’t tweet, you ought to care about Twitter’s health and wellbeing and what Musk is doing to it. More hate speech, disinformation, and extremism on Twitter is bad for us all.

Luciana Grosso, an Italian journalist, emailed to respond to the recent issue in which I recounted my Thanksgiving trip to Italy and described its recent election of Giorgia Meloni, a far-right fangirl of Mussolini as a “few steps toward fascism.” She wrote:

I totally dislike her, her party, and her value system. But I do not think that in her leadership, and in her party, you can find something that puts our democracy at risk. Her party is a strongly right-wing party. But it is not a party that questions, in any way, the republican system and its rules. The party Fratelli d’Italia is the “nephew” of a party called Movimento Sociale and the “son” of another party called Alleanza Nazionale. None of these parties (not even the first one, Movimento Sociale, founded after World War II by a loyal follower of Mussolini) has put democracy at risk or even in doubt. On the contrary, they have always shown respect for the republic and its basic rules…Giorgia Meloni is the heir of their tradition that we can describe as a right-wing tradition, maybe a post-fascist tradition, but not a fascist tradition. In the European Parliament, her party sits in the same group that, until some years ago, was the group of English Tories. This is the reason why, in my opinion, you cannot feel any sense of authoritarianism in Italy. Because, at this moment, Italians (even the leftist, like me) do not feel that her government is actually a danger. 

I think that we faced a real danger (for democracy, parliament, and republic itself) during the time of Movimento 5 Stelle and the government of Giuseppe Conte in 2018 and 2019. Movimento 5 Stelle, whose slogan was “Vaffanculo” (fuck off), is a party born with the explicit intent of delegitimize the republican system, spreading fake news and violence on social networks. Movimento 5 Stelle is the closest thing to Donald Trump (and his disruptive message) we have had (and still have) in Italy. In fact, in 2016, they were on Trump’s side and celebrating his victory. Now they are trying to clean their image and put themselves on the left side of the parliament. But it is not clear if their “conversion” is true or is just a make-up operation. Personally, I am skeptical. In conclusion, we Italians do not feel in danger because actually, we are not. Meloni is lot of awful things, but in the end, she is democratic. And I am pretty sure I will vote again in five years.

Thanks, Luciana, for the Italian history lesson. I hope you’re right.

Betty Beeler wrote from France:

I’m a bit more than halfway through American Psychosis. It’s one of those books you have to digest bit by bit, not because the language is complicated, but because there’s a lot of consequential historical material to take in on almost every page. I am pleased to see you share some of those bits in Our Land. Of course, it would be great if everyone could read your book to get the full story of how white supremacist & fascist groups have influenced/influence American politics, but it’s equally important to bring up lessons from the past as a warning to new generations that there has always been an undercurrent of threats to democracy. Your book conveys that threat between every line.

Thanks, Betty. That was one of the reasons I wrote the book. Much about the Trump era is exceptional and extreme, but these threats did not arise out of the blue. If we understand the history of how we got here, we are better equipped to fight for the future. 

MoxieCam™

“Moxie, why do you enjoy racing through the leaves so much?”

“Well, it’s because…Oh, look at that, gotta run!”

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

December 6, 2022: How Trump-Russia denialism lead to Elon Musk’s dangerous #TwitterFiles failure; a Twitter exit strategy; Sonic Youth’s “Superstar”; and more.

December 3, 2022: The GOP and Nazis, nothing new; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Madison Cawthorn, for the last time?); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 30, 2022: What I learned during my Thanksgiving in Italy; why Andor may be the best Star Wars spinoff; and more.

November 17, 2022: Herschel Walker should release his medical records; giving thanks early; The Last Movie Stars reveals Paul Newman’s and Joanne Woodward’s most notable performances—their own lives; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 15, 2022: Is this the end of Donald Trump?; where were you when the Senate was called (I was with Jackson Browne and Tim Robbins); and Neil Young and Crazy Horse keep on riding with a new album; and more.

November 12, 2022: The 2022 midterms and the state of Trumpism; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special Election Edition); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 8, 2022: It’s election day…and it’s the Beatles; and more.

November 5, 2022: Has Biden lowballed the threat to American democracy; American Psychosis in the news; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Kari Lake); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 1, 2022: Elon Musk: a problem, not a solution, when it comes to right-wing extremism; Barack Obama gets it right; Jason Kander’s gutsy and empathetic memoirs; Robert Gordon, RIP; and more.

October 29, 2022: How Covid disappeared—politically; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Mehmet Oz); the Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.

October 25, 2022: Why Joe Biden and the Democrats should be talking about teeth; Michael Flynn’s greatest hits; the brilliance of Peaky Blinders; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.