There are tens of millions of conservatives in the U.S. For American democracy to succeed, they need a political party that productively channels their aspirations, represents their ideologies, mediates their conflicts and functions in accord with democratic values and the rule of law.
No such party exists.
The vacuum is only partly a collective action problem. Pro-democracy conservative elites have failed to organize to defend democracy and advance their interests. The third-tier candidates opposing Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the GOP presidential nomination can’t even settle on a narrative for why such brazenly anti-democratic politicians pose a danger.
Arriving at a collective strategy to neutralize the threat is even more unlikely. Former Rep. Liz Cheney has been a brave truth teller. But she has been mostly singing solo, which enabled MAGA supporters to isolate, demonize and remove her from power.
The problem also is a function of how deeply askew the GOP was even before Trump. The Republican demand for stupid conspiracy theories to explain the world — Barack Obama is an African-born socialist — presaged the moral collapse into Trumpism.
The party may have plumbed a new low after Trump was indicted on 37 felony counts for allegedly mishandling classified documents, including highly classified state secrets. The former president was also charged with obstructing the federal investigation.
Most Republican elites took a look at the damning reality of the indictment, and promptly rejected the latest opportunity to break with Trumpism. Some addressed the indictment in the traditional manner, by misleading Fox News viewers about Hillary Clinton. Others shoveled buckets of nonsense. Still others resorted to rewriting the law in their heads to render Trump’s actions magically lawful.
In a CBS News poll taken after the indictment was announced, 80 percent of likely GOP primary voters said they would like Trump to be president even if he is convicted. Three-quarters want a nominee “similar to Trump” if Trump is not the nominee. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported “a wave” of calls for violence by Trump supporters and The Washington Post noted a “surge” in violent right-wing rhetoric.
The chicken-and-egg dilemma — Republican elites won’t risk telling the base the truth because the base doesn’t want to hear it, and those voters never learn the truth because party leaders and party-aligned media only give them what they want — has been going on since at least 2016. It’s hard to see how the party pulls out of its anti-democratic spiral.
Democracy barely survived Trump’s first term, which ended with his instigating a violent assault to halt the transfer of power. It’s unlikely it could survive a second round.
The most pressing task for anyone eager to bolster democracy is to find a way to make a viable, intra-party fighting force of Murkowskis and Romneys. Though a GOP rescue mission has yet to materialize, that doesn’t mean that it won’t. It took a few years to repel the force of McCarthyism in the early 1950s.
The trouble is, this is year eight of MAGA’s dominion over the party. If millions of Republicans are still clamoring for Trump, it’s unlikely that it’s because they’ve failed to notice that he is spectacularly corrupt. For many followers, his lies and grift and even his buffoonery and contempt for national security are a net positive, another means to convey their own loathing for elites and a system that they feel discounts them.
With work, luck and pluck, Democrats and independents can repel the GOP. But they can’t reform it. Only Republicans can do that. Many Republicans appear to be waiting, still, for the right moment. Like last weekend.
Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy.
