The Slow, Painful Suicide of the GOP
Some say the Republican party has outlived its usefulness. It's worse than that. They've headed down a path from which there is no return.
For more than a decade, many of us have written and spoken about the complete lack of courage of Republican politicians. We’ve accounted the hypocrisies, we’ve tallied the countless lies, we’ve pointed out their abject immorality.
In so doing, there has always been at least some thought that there might be some redemption of the party. Liberal and progressive commentators have often provided constructive criticism as to how the GOP might get itself back on track as a viable political party. They have maintained that the two-party system has, in its own way, functioned by creating ballast so that fringe positions espoused by one party or the other would not overtake the mainstream.
That theoretical redemption, however, has been entirely dependent on one condition: holding their party’s leader accountable for his crimes and misdemeanors, both charged and yet to be charged. That, however, has been an endeavor that the GOP has been unwilling to undertake.
Even the most rudimentary assessment of the past year reveals that any remaining optimism about the party’s redemption, shaky though it may have been, has been entirely unwarranted, and the escalation of their leader’s fascist activities during the first month of this year has removed any doubt.
The list of outrages that Republicans have implicitly or explicitly sanctioned in the past decade or so is seemingly limitless, any one of which would have brought to a conclusion any previous administration — Republican or Democratic alike. I’m including this summary not just to rattle off a list of horrors perpetrated by Trump but rather as a reminder that Congressional Republicans could have hopped off the Trump train (and gotten the nation back to some semblance of normalcy) at numerous times in the last decade:
2016 Republican candidates for president lambasted Trump when they were his primary rivals but kowtowed as soon as he insulted them. Several of them were sufficiently obsequious to agree to become members of his administration after having faced nationwide humiliation as the result of his ruthless scorn.
Republican Congress members rarely, if ever, called out any of the more than 30,000 lies he told during his first term, many of which had extremely negative consequences. Those lies were often repeated by Congress members as if they were gospel.
The biggest lie that Trump told (a/k/a “the Big Lie”) was that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Initially, a few Republicans quietly objected to this whopper but most circled back when the puppetmaster exerted even the slightest pressure.
The Big Lie led to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and, in the immediate aftermath, Republicans condemned both the insurrection itself and Trump, as fomenter-in-chief. But they quickly retreated, characterizing the insurrection as peaceful protest or as a “tourist visit,” despite hundreds of hours of video to the contrary.
Despite impeachment on two separate occasions, Senate Republicans — at Mitch McConnell’s direction — refused to convict Trump, despite the fact that the second impeachment was for the January 6th attack on the Capitol, during which those same Republican Senators’ lives were at risk, thanks to Trump’s incitement.
Republicans voiced not a whisper of chagrin or embarrassment that the candidate they championed to return to the White House had been convicted of 34 felonies in the State of New York, instead choosing to call into question the validity of those convictions, instead characterizing those convictions by a jury as somehow being politically motivated and threatening (and later attempting and failing to prosecute) the prosecutor.
Republicans have been all too willing to look the other way when Donald Trump has accepted multi-million dollar “gifts” from foreign governments, the most blatant of which was a jumbo jet from Qatar. He has received money from sources with business before the U.S. government to build his vanity project — the White House ballroom that apparently has a fluctuating budget and no accountability. It shouldn’t need to be said, but these are obvious violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
Speaking of that ballroom, Republicans also willingly ignored the fact that we all woke up one day to learn that the East Wing of the White House — the so-called “peoples’ house” — was in the process of being demolished to make way for the unapproved, ill-conceived ballroom.
DOGE randomly dismantled and destroyed multiple government agencies — agencies that have provided vital services to U.S. citizens. As predicted, the DOGE effort has been a complete failure in its stated mission of saving money, ending up costing taxpayers way more than it ever saved. Republicans have remained almost entirely mum about this fiasco, pretending that their silence will make the American people will simply forget this gigantic multi-billion dollar “oopsie.”
One such casualty of DOGE — USAID — no longer exists and therefore can no longer fund long-standing successful programs to prevent disease. Millions of people will die from a signature program — President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — of a previous Republican president being halted.
The destruction and degradation of our cultural institutions like the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Smithsonian Institution is perhaps a less blatant attempt at destroying our democracy. But Trump’s insistence on imposing his influence over these institutions is no less important, particularly where that influence comes in the form of rewriting our history.
There are now millions of Americans who can no longer afford health insurance because of the systematic dismantling of the Affordable Care Act at the behest of Donald Trump, after many years of Republicans demonizing the ACA without providing any alternatives.
Tariffs have become Trump’s all purpose tool to try to achieve almost any objective. Fix the economy? Randomly apply tariffs all over the world. Bending another nation to his will? Apply tariffs targeted at that country’s products and trade. Stop the flow of drugs into the U.S.? Implement tariffs. Protect national security? Apply tariffs.
Just in case our allies haven’t been alienated enough by tariffs, Trump has ensured further alienation with rolling threats of war, illegal bombings of fishing boats, kidnapping another country’s president, and undermining the very treaty organization — NATO — that has helped keep America and the western world safe.
One of Trump’s repeated vows during his re-election campaign was that his administration would get to the truth of those Epstein files. The reality of his time in office so far is that he has done everything in his power to obstruct the release of those files.
We’ve witnessed all the evidence of outright fascism — and then some — emanating from the White House, while Republicans publicly pretended they didn’t notice. They’ve either been on board with the fascist playbook or they have they’ve lacked the moral clarity and courage necessary to stand up to the fascists and fascist wannabes.
There comes a point at which it’s futile to keep framing the problem as solely Trump’s doing or holding out hope that Trump will somehow change his behavior. The only change in Trump’s behavior has been engaging in even worse behavior.
Because they control both houses of Congress, Republicans still have the ability to stop Trump through legislation, through impeachment and conviction, and through applying the process for removal from office codified in the 25th Amendment. But, either due to absolute cowardice or political self-interest (or both), they have consistently chosen to turn a blind eye to every horrific deed, every illegal action, and every broken promise.
Here’s one more grim reminder for the Republicans. Trump has always become worse, never better. So if he’s capable of this in early 2026, what will things be like by summer or fall?
Polling already predicts that the fall elections will not look good for Republicans. There’s a good chance they will lose their majorities in both houses of Congress. It will be up to voters to ensure Democrats gain some leverage in Congress so they can do the hard work of restoring our democracy.
The Republican party is now nothing more than a cult of personality.