Is Trump destroying the GOP?

It's crucial to recognize the GOP's early steps towards its own destruction when it embraced candidate Donald Trump, as this shift signals a broader move toward authoritarianism that defines 21st-century politics. 

Ignoring this would overlook one of the most significant political transformations of our time.

This was why, when he boasted in January 2016, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters," alarms went off. As a historian of Fascism, I recognized this as a dangerous echo of past authoritarian regimes, making me watch closely to see who would come forth to kiss the ring after that gangster audition.

There were death threats for any disloyal votes on impeachments, public humiliations on national television, and the lie that Trump won the 2020 election. The final shock was sending a violent mob after Congress on January 6 and then pardoning them, which broke the party's ties to democratic accountability for good. 

Some authoritarians created their own parties (Mussolini's Fascism and Hitler's "National Socialist German Workers" come to mind). Trump had no ready-made political vehicle for his ambitions. 

Because he was originally a registered Democrat, he had to win over the Grand Old Party to gain credibility and access to its political machine. Political scientists use the term cooptation to describe how authoritarians bind individuals and groups to them. It can also be considered a form of corruption, given the ethical compromises and changes in personal and professional practices that come with cooperating with amoral and violent individuals.

The Republican Party, and the robust media universe that supported it, were ready for a far-right, rule-breaking and polarizing personality like Trump. A 2012 assessment by several political scientists described key elements of an illiberal move that, by 2016, had primed Republicans to accept Trump's candidacy: The GOP had become a defiant anomaly in American politics. 

It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. We are at a point where…the Party of Lincoln is attacking the right to vote for their party leader, Donald Trump, to be obeyed, because it's the most important part for the party.

Legislators have discovered that it's easier to give up power than to exercise it. Parties insist that constitutional principles only matter when opponents violate them. Oligarchs fawn over the new leader to gain access, contracts, and status. 

The debates change from "is it constitutional, to is he on our side?" The institutions survive. The Capital, the Courts, and Congress can gather; Presidents can swear to defend the Constitution. The document can remain beneath glass in the Library of Congress. What is missing is the determination to make it binding. 

The price of indifference is discovering, too late, that without that promise, constitutional rights are only words.

David R. James. Eureka, Montana