Every so often a pundit on either side will say something along these lines:
Republicons are privately embarrassed by DJT, they know he’s unfit, they know his sentences border on senseless, they know he makes them a laughing stock around the world, his approval rating is low, his possession of the nuclear codes makes them toss and turn at night, so why don’t they just abandon him?
Why is he battling with the members of Congress who have direct control over whether or not he is removed from office?
Pence meets the Norquist standard of having working fingers to hold a pen and sign legislation. Wouldn’t they get the same tax cuts, voter suppression, immigration restrictions, S.Ct. justices and culture war legislation from Pence?
A few minutes ago, watching another of the endless clips from the Phoenix speech, I figured out why Ryan and McConnell have to stick with DJT no matter what he does to them. No matter how much they feel he is hurting the Rcon party, they have to stick with him for one reason:
Pence doesn’t “speak deplorable”.
If he did, he would have been able to get traction in a presidential run of his own. He was talked about and longed for in some circles, but he has the personality of a block of wood (which is actually an insult to blocks of wood) and as a result he didn’t get many followers or any major funding.
On the other hand, DJT is a propagandist’s dream.
His natural instinct matches the base Republicons are so desperately trying to keep: trying to keep under control, trying to keep in the dark, trying to keep on the financial leash.
DJT speaks like them because he thinks like them because he is them. Rude, crude, socially unacceptable, and proud of it.
He gets away with saying the things they wish they could say. He gets away with doing the things they wish they could do. He does not have to censor himself to please anybody. He does not care what educated people think of him. And so far he manages to face no consequences for this behavior.
He is their misogynist/racist/wealth fantasies come to life. And he replaced the man in the White House who was their worst nightmare.
They love him because they see themselves reflected in him. They love him more than they love themselves.
When they love a candidate like that and identify with a candidate like that there is literally nothing he can do they will not forgive. They forgive him for the same things they forgive themselves for, or wish they could get forgiveness for. Or wish they could get away with even if there were a price to pay—but somehow DJT gets to do it all and pay no price. All the people they hate, hate him, and yet they have not managed to bring him down.
He is their omnipotent superhero. They would openly worship him if they could.
He hasn’t shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue yet, but he has praised the mindset that killed Heather Heyer and he casually brushed off the deaths of the sailors on the USS McCain.
Republicon leadership is privately horrified. They don’t identify with him in the same way but they were forced to hitch their stars to his wagon when they couldn’t stop their internecine fighting long enough to band together and stop him.
Now R leadership MUST hold on to him as long as they are able. He is their only life raft right now, even if that life raft is 60% underwater and springing new leaks every day.
With him, R leadership can still have a hope of turning out automatically loyal voters in red areas where they need to hold on to gerrymandered seats. With DJT’s gift for being able to ad-lib fluent GOPropaganda, Rcons can keep those voters in the dark about how they are being lied to, how they are being ignored, and how they are being intentionally hurt by the Republicons’ real agenda. With him, they can keep getting those small dollar donations and the in-kind help of volunteer time in the places they need it most.
Rs know they have no hope of getting to a majority in their key states without that knee-jerk base.
Republicons need those unthinking voters to stay with them as long as possible because once they lose the folks Colbert called the “backwash” they can never win an election again.
They must keep deplorables in their pocket until they get more voter suppression in place, or else demographic changes and the natural True Blue Majority will start beating them sooner rather than later.
Staying with DJT may kill the R party anyway, but Rs are grasping at the only straw they have left, hoping for a last gasp of power that will at least put some money in their pockets before the hard fall that is coming for them, taking one last desperate gulp of air out of the oxygen tank they know is almost empty. It got them up the mountain to total control of all three branches of government, but in burning those reserves they won’t make it down from the summit of Everest. And they know it. They gambled everything on him and now he is all they have.
The longer they stay with him, the more people in the “persuadable” category are watching Maddow, figuring out the truth, switching from R to I, and even switching from R to D. The longer they stay with him the less likely it is that Rs will ever get those voters back when they (presumably?) nominate less deplorable candidates in the future.
Republicons have painted themselves into a corner with DJT. They didn’t stop him when they could because they didn’t realize he would really be this bad (duh—we tried to tell you!!!). Now they are stuck with him. If we play our cards right, when they finally walk out, we can point to the paint on their shoes to discredit and disgrace them for generations.
This is not over. All is not lost. They are much more desperate than we are. They are on the ropes and their own selfish actions put them there. Plus they are only just waking up to the fact that we outnumber them.
So keep the faith.
And keep resisting.
Republicons don’t have the ability to stop and put on a kind face
Link to previous commentaries in the True Blue Report series