There’s been a lot of discussion here about how Trump took existing GOP flaws and desires and magnified them, how he said out loud what many of them were whispering. But in addition to all that, Trump has made the GOP behave it has never done before. Put simply, since leaving office, Trump has managed to infantilize the Republican party.
Trump has always behaved like a spoiled brat. In picking an image to go with this diary, I had an overabundance of choices. The Trump Blimp has become so famous and iconic that the Museum of London recently acquired it for their collection. (Don’t tell Trump.) Trump’s pathological inability to admit he lost, his totally transactional approach to the world, his fits of rage whenever anyone disagrees with him in any way or when anything doesn’t go totally his way are classic examples of infantilism. For all we know, he even wets his bed. (Trump also decides when his sheets will be cleaned, and strips them from the bed himself.) His temper tantrums are legendary. (If only they were just legends!)
For all the many faults of the GOP, infantilism was not one of them back then. Moscow Mitch in particular made it clear, in his subtle way, that he wasn’t going to put up with Trump’s baby ways. In one especially telling incident, he reportedly planned to disinvite Trump from the Biden inauguration:
According to [Jonathan] Karl [in Betrayal], McConnell “felt he could not give Trump another opportunity to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.”
Trump, as any infant would do, retorted that McConnell couldn’t “disinvite” him because he hadn’t planned to go.
Or remember this from 2019? Kevin McCarthy Leads GOP Condemnation of King for his comments on White supremacy. McCarthy also got into a screaming match with the Infant-In-Chief during the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, in which the I-i-C retorted, as infants will, that Kevin was to blame.
How things have changed. McConnell still brushes Trump off:
Former President Donald Trump took a whack at Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell last weekend, calling him an "Old Crow" as he railed against the Kentucky Republican.
On Tuesday, McConnell took it in stride.
"Actually, it's quite an honor," McConnell told CNN. "Old Crow is Henry Clay's favorite bourbon."
McCarthy, on the other hand, has let himself become a baby-sitter, if not a baby himself. His caucus is now a pre-school playpen where Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and a whole host of other infants compete to see who can outdo Trump at flinging poo. And Trump eggs them on; he just endorsed Gosar for re-election (even though Political Wire notes that Gosar doesn’t have a competitive race).
If the GOP is now Trump's party, it’s also Trump’s baby. Part of the Democrats’ strategy for 2022 and 2024 needs to be a highlight of this infantilization. Much of his base is just as infantile (or has been into infants) as their leader. But most of the electorate are parents who have raised children to be adults and know what damage infants can do. This isn’t simply a case of letting the inmates be in charge of the asylum; it's giving infants a loaded gun (or nuclear weapons).
Our message needs to be that the GOP, the whole GOP, needs a serious time-out.