The Republican Party Leadership's Moral Abyss

The latest indictment of Donald Trump - this time for trying to organize a coup to overthrow the 2020 election - underscores what has been obvious for years now to moral, decent people who believe in the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law, namely that Trump is a menace to the nation and is the poster boy of moral bankruptcy.  These people who recognize Trump for the cancer that he and his followers are on America are the true American patriots, not Trump's unwashed, hate and grievance filled MAGA base or congressional Republicans who talk of patriotism yet continue mouth countless apologies for Trump if not outright aid and abet his lies and crimes.  Given the details of the newest indictments - Jack Smith likely has more damaging evidence that will come out at trial - the question again becomes whether or not the GOP can save itself from the moral abyss supporting Trump embodies or whether the GOP is truly now  the party of immorality and demagoguery notwithstanding its alliance with "conservative Christians" who have made it clear they are in no way followers of Christ despite feigned piety and false displays of religiosity.  A piece in The Atlantic and another at CNN look at the moral cliff the GOP stands atop, ponders whether the GOP is beyond saving, and how moral people need to regard Trump's continued supporters.  First, these highlights from The Atlantic:

Donald Trump stands indicted for attempting to thwart the peaceful transfer of power and subvert the rights of American citizens. This is the moment that will decide our future as a democracy.

Over the past year, state and federal prosecutors have alleged that Donald Trump went on something like a crime spree as a presidential candidate, as the sitting president, and then as a private citizen after his defeat. The charges, from Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago, include business fraud, the illegal retention of classified material, and the destruction of evidence.

All of these accusations, however, pale in importance next to the indictment handed down today.

Trump is accused of multiple conspiracies against the United States, all designed to keep him in power against the will of the voters and in violation of the Constitution. The former president . . . is accused of knowing that he lost a free and fair election, and, rather than transferring power to a duly elected successor, engaging in criminal plots against our democracy, all while firing up a mob that would later storm the Capitol. (The Trump campaign issued a rambling statement that called the charges “fake.”).

Long before now, however, Americans should have reached the conclusion, with or without a trial, that Trump is a menace to the United States and poisonous to our society.

The GOP base, controlled by Trump’s cult of personality, will likely never admit its mistake: As my colleague Peter Wehner writes, Trump’s record of “lawlessness and depravity” means nothing to Republicans. But other Republicans now, more than ever, face a moment of truth. They must decide if they are partisans or patriots. They can no longer claim to be both.

The rest of us, as a nation but also as individuals, can no longer indulge the pretense that Trump is just another Republican candidate, that supporting Donald Trump is just another political choice, and that agreeing with Trump’s attacks on our democracy is just a difference of opinion.

I have long described Trump’s candidacies as moral choices and tests of civic character, but I have also cautioned that Americans, for the sake of social comity, should resist too many arguments about politics among themselves. I can no longer defend this advice.

The indictment handed down today challenges every American to put a shoulder to the wheel and defend our republic in every peaceful, legal, and civilized way they can. According to the charges, not only did Trump try to overturn the election; he presided over a clutch of co-conspirators who intended to put down any further challenges to Trump’s continued rule by force.

This is why we can no longer merely roll our eyes when an annoying uncle rhapsodizes about stolen elections. We should not gently ask our parents if perhaps we might change the channel from Fox during dinner. We are not obligated to gingerly change the subject when an old friend goes on about “Demonrats” or the dire national-security implications around Hunter Biden’s genitalia. Enough of all this; we can love our friends and our family and our neighbors without accepting their terms of debate. To support Trump is to support sedition and violence, and we must be willing to speak this truth not only to power but to our fellow citizens.

Trump and his media enablers, of course, will fume that any criticism of choices made by millions of voters is uncivil and condescending—even as they paint other American citizens as traitors who support pedophiles and perverts. Trump has made such accusations, and the implied threat of violence behind them, part of the everyday American political environment. This brutish bullying is aimed at stopping the rest of us from speaking our mind. But after today, every American citizen who cares about the Constitution should affirm, without hesitation, that any form of association with Trump is reprehensible, that each of us will draw moral conclusions about anyone who continues to support him, and that these conclusions will guide both our political and our personal choices.

The piece at CNN continues this theme and the reality that both the media - always so wrapped in false equivalency - and decent people need to shun those who continue to support Trump and his acolytes.  Here are excerpts:

For most of my life I have identified myself as a Republican and, with few exceptions, have voted the same. But I now find that the GOP leadership of today is unrecognizable when compared to the party I supported enthusiastically during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

I was Bush’s minister for the last 11.5 years of his life, and had occasion to witness the rectitude with which he approached governing and that guided his views on politics. But men like him are in short supply. A GOP that once welcomed character, decency and morality is sinking quickly into an abyss. These days, the party values polls and raw power more than principle and probity.

How unlike Bush is the severely morally challenged GOP of today, with failings that eclipse even those of former President Richard Nixon. We are where we are largely because of former President Donald Trump, with his history of sex abuse, shady corporate business deals, abuse of presidential office to attack his perceived enemies — and other transgressions too numerous to name. Yet, for some reason — either by design or default — the GOP is failing to hold him to account.

Wallace asked [RNC Chairwoman] McDaniel whether the Republican Party would have a problem nominating a presidential candidate who is under federal indictment or who is a convicted felon. The GOP chairwoman fumbled, stumbled and diverted so much that she sounded like a toddler trying to explain an advanced calculus problem. In the end, the best answer she could come up with was “It’s not up to me. It’s up to the voters. They’re going to make their decision.”

It was as egregious as missed opportunities go — but it was just one of many by leaders of my party. The GOP’s elected and appointed leaders have decided — either by design or default — that voters must remain sheeplike as they ignore the moral dangers of Trump’s antics. The collective leadership of the GOP appears willing to stand by, hands on hips, witnessing the party’s descent into the loutishness of Trump and his acolytes. It may take a generation or more for the party to recover from the looming disaster — if it recovers.

What’s needed now is full-throated condemnation of the former president from members of his party.

It was the summer of 1974, after the scales of devotion to disgraced Nixon had fallen from his eyes. In the midst of the Watergate crisis, [George H.W.] Bush, who at the time was GOP chair (the same position now occupied by McDaniel), wrote in his journal that he was making a clean break with Nixon over Watergate.

“I want to make damn clear the lie is something we can’t support. But this era of tawdry, shabby lack of morality has got to end… because what we need at this juncture in our history is a certain sense of morality and a certain sense of decency,” he wrote in August 1974.

Even Nixon had enough of a moral compass to understand when it was time to leave office and not put his own interests above that of his party or the nation — especially when party leaders were showing him the door.

Trump, by contrast, has pledged that if convicted, he will continue to pursue the presidency — yet another example of that sheepdog on the edge of the cliff, giving little thought to the disaster he would be setting into motion.

If you are a Republican like me who hopes to prevent this impending disaster, do not count on the current leadership of the GOP to do the job.

We in the party can do infinitely better for ourselves. More of the same will only lead Republican voters hurtling down a precipice and into a pit of ethical nihilism — led there by the poll-leading but immoral former president.

If, instead of the bottom of the abyss, you are seeking to return the Republican norms and values that our party once embodied, then turn the page with me and offer a hearty amen to a great, late president Bush — and Republican presidential contenders cut from a similar cloth who still understand the importance of grace, morality, decency and dignity. It is there that we will find our party’s future leader.