“Unlike the bulk of their colleagues who are eager to remain in office, Romney and Cheney have decided continuing to serve in Congress is not worth the bargain of remaining silent about an individual they believe poses a threat to American democracy,” Jonathan [Martin] told me. “They also can’t understand why Republican colleagues they respect don’t share their alarm.
In an interview for Jonathan’s and Alex’s book [This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for American Democracy], Cheney specifically mentions her disappointment with McConnell: “I think he’s completely misjudged the danger of this moment.”
I've been thinking about the different interpretations of what's happening now in the U.S. in the wake of the Trump presidency. You could put them in five broad categories:
- Traditionalist (mostly White) Nationalists, many of whom think that the country needs to be saved from a Satanic plot run by Liberals or others who see themselves as the "real Americans" and think that Libs are priggish, condescending, effete, woke un-American globalists who need to be "owned". Both think they are defending an idea of America that when push comes to shove has no need of democracy, if democracy means letting anybody but them run things. Pols like Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Marjory Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley are vying to get in front of this group's parade should Trump falter.
- Cosmopolitan Liberals who dominate mainstream cultural institutions, particularly the the media and the universities, and those who are most influenced by their ethos and world view. These are people who think that "woke" is not a pejorative term, but simply a word that describes basic decency. They live in a bubble reinforced by their own complacency that the facts and their being on the right side of history support their politics. Examples here are every Democratic leader who has an absolutist pro-choice stance on abortion and who thinks that sexual identity and racial equity issues in general are more important than economic issues that that have destroyed the social fabric of working-class America.
- Main Street Americans who lean conservative and who care about American democracy but who think that it's in no danger, that what's going on in the political sphere is just the same-old-same-old partisan wrangling. Trump was bad, but not that bad. What happened on 1/6 was more or less the same as what happened in Seattle and Portland during the Black Lives Matter protests in Summer of '20. They see extremists as on both sides, and they see them as a nuisance, not a real threat. This group comprises corporate friendly "blue-dog" Democrats and plutocrat-friendly Republicans like Glen Youngkin and Mitch McConnell.
- Establishment institutionalists, whether Liberals or Never-Trump Conservatives, who think that culture-war resentments and populist anger and credulity are driving a political movement that will destroy American democracy. And while the threat comes primarily from the illiberal Right, they are dismayed by the way the cultural Left in category 2 continues to live up to the worst stereotype that Main Street Americans in category 3 have of them. Category 2 folks might be right on the issues, but they seem to have no idea how unattractive they make their positions to people who are not already persuaded.
- People who are oblivious and so have no interpretation. They wouldn't care if the U.S. became a monarchy or an absolutist dictatorship so long as it didn't affect their day-to-day life.
Obviously, there's overlap between categories.
The culture war is being waged between those who dominate the first and second categories, and it's this war that is at the root of our political dysfunction. I'm in the fourth category as someone who while having no illusions about the failures, contradictions, and raw inadequacy of the Liberal Order, see it as far preferable to an illiberal one. I fear that the Republican Party's future lies with its domination by illiberal culture warriors in category 1 in coalition with corporate and plutocratic interests whose policies dominate in category 3, and that would be a disaster for the American experiment because illiberalism and the interests of the 1% have no vested interest in democracy.
But I'd argue that the future of democracy lies with the rank-and-file Main Streeters who naively vote for the pols in the third category. They don't see that what happened during the Trump presidency culminating in 1/6 as that big of a deal, but rather as an aberration. They are the suburbanites who vote for Glen Youngkin or they are pols like Will Hurd who think that the Republican Party can become again the party of normal conservative values--low taxes, small government, strong military, and secure borders. And clearly people like Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy want people to believe that about the Republican Party, and they believe that they can hold onto power with a coalition of category 1 people with most of those who are in category 3 and those who bother to vote in category 5.
McConnell, McCarthy, and most of the non-Freedom Caucus pols that follow their lead have no illusions about Trump, but they see no need to hold him accountable. They wouldn't mind if the Democrats push him out of politics, so long as they are perceived by the base not to have cooperated in such an effort. Otherwise, they think Trump will just eventually go away, and they tell themselves that they can continue to keep the MAGA crazies under control so long as they throw them a bone or two from time to time. The Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Louie Gohmerts, Paul Gosars, and Matt Gaetzes are an embarrassing nuisance, but we can keep them under control, they think. That's their bet, and for them it's a bet worth making because all the structural factors favor their taking the Senate and the House if they don't blow it with the base.
And so the question is who's got the better grip on the future of the Republican Party--people like Liz Cheney in category 4 who believe we are in a very dangerous moment or those like Kevin McCarthy in category 3 who think not so much? Since the more likely scenario is that a coalition of categories 1 and 3 will take the legislature in '22, and a good chance that they'll take the WH in '24 if either Biden or Harris are the Dem candidates, we'll find out, won't we?
Got to The Danger of the Moment 2