Forget the predictions of the final judgment day on what President Trump Short could DO: His “Great Beautiful Law” has already achieved his first important victim: Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.
Tillis, who could not support a bill that would kick an estimated 660,000 Carolinians from northern Medicaid, He said to journalists: “I respect President Trump, support most of his agenda, but I don't lean to anyone when the people of North Carolina are at risk.”
Noble words. Touching, really. How to see a man insist on reciting the promise of loyalty while standing in front of a shooting squad.
The rare moment of Tillis's spine earned him a not so overdue threat of Trump: support the bill or enjoy his next primary challenge.
Then, in a movement that felt less as a challenge and more as a tired resignation, Tillis announced that he would not seek re -election. “You can't say goodbye, I renounced,” he said essentially, the eternal battle shout of those who will soon be used.
There is a reason why Trump's threats take seriously. In fact, while Tillis was channeling “he takes this job and pushes” by Johnny Paycheck, an organization aligned by Trump, Maga Kentucky Pac, was Launch of an advertising campaign of $ 1 million against another traitor: representative Thomas Massie. Massie was one of the only two Republicans of the House of Representatives who had the Agallón (or perhaps the intellectual consistency) to oppose the bill.
Among Massie's concerns is the impact that the bill would have on national debt: “We are not reorganizing the covered chairs in the Titanic,” The colorful Gadfly warned on the floor of the house. “We are putting coal in the boiler and establishing a course for the iceberg.”
Unlike Tillis, Massie is less type of bleeding heart establishment and more libertarian monk. He has survived Trump's anger before (which places him in a very elite club with the Republican governor and Secretary of State of Georgia) and seems strangely unleashed by fragmented fire.
That, of course, is weird.
Just ask the representative Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska who has faced Trump more and more about a variety of problems. He has also announced his retirement.
This is a pattern. The streets are full of the political remains of the Republicans who dared to deviate from Trump's whims. Some names are familiar. Liz Cheney. Adam Kinzinger. Jeff Flake. Bob Corker. Mitt Romney. Others have retreated in our memory. Mike Gallagher. Justin Amash. Denver Riggyman. Mark Sanford. Will Hurd.
Some of them retired (see Ken Buck). Some were Retired (see Peter Meijer).
Some who previously opposed Trump have abandoned their principles and ambitions to be absorbed by Borg.
Do you remember Marco Rubio, who once warned that Trump could not trust nuclear codes? As Secretary of State, he is now one of the bobbleheads with his head. Senator Lindsey Graham (RS.C.) went from calling Trump “a xenophobic religious fan” who race “to fight for the honor of Trump's golf disability. Nancy Mace and Elise Stefanik? They practically had a public conversion experience.
The road to Maga crosses the Valley of the selfish.
This purge and conversion process has been happening for a decade. The few opposite voices that Trump faced in his first term: then the speaker Paul D. Ryan, the then leader of the majority of the majority, Mitch McConnell and several other adults in the room (also known as “the deep state”), have become irrelevance or retirement.
Ryan has been replaced by Mike Johnson, who knows exactly who is the boss. McConnell, meanwhile, is still technically. But its influence has been constantly eclipsed by the cult of Trump's personality.
And here is the true kicking of the conservatives committed: Trump really doesn't care if you oppose or not too conservative or not conservative enough. Nor does he care if these apostates are replaced by triumphant loyal or liberal democrats.
The ideological consistency was never the point. What matters to him is obedience. What matters is domination. He has discovered that when it comes to a management power, it is better to be completely in charge of a political party than widely popular among the electorate.
If Flake, Arizona's Republican senator, had to be replaced by Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, so. If Tillis's seat ends in the hands of a Democrat (as it could happen), that is also fine for Trump, as long as no future republican has the idea that they can challenge the beloved leader and live to tell the story.
These compensations are not hypothetical. In fact, almost immediately after Bacon announced his retirement the other week, the Cook's political report reduced his Nebraska seat From “shaken” to “Democrat Delgado”.
He doesn't care about the president. Any way, another domino falls. It's not about growing the party. It's about purifying it: boil it in a smaller, more angry and more compatible organism.
Trump doesn't want a majority. He wants a mafia.
And so the sacrifice continues. Not with gulags or guillotines, but with threats of social and primary networks for anyone who does not accompany the program.
As a politicalologist Larry Sabato expressed him so eloquently“Any Republican who votes against the great bill better has a clear vision of the great exit door.”
Welcome to Trump's party. Where loyalty is mandatory, courage is crushed and “early retirement” is the modern equivalent of a cyanide capsule.
You are on the bus or throw you under.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Dirty rich politicians” and “Too dumb to fail. “
