Fear ringed by anger defines the new GOP

HALIFAX—Politics has always had its share of self-interested fakers masquerading as public servants. But never before has a band of criminals, miscreants, and industrial-strength hypocrites captured a mainstream party, let alone one in the self-styled greatest democracy on earth. This is how the Republican Party—the so-called party of law-and-order—now looks. For starters, it has selected a convicted felon awaiting sentencing as its leader—a new low in any democracy. This outcome cannot be attributed to Donald Trump’s character or charisma because he possesses neither. What he does exude is the fascination of the abomination, hitched to a towering sense of aggrievement across the land. Despite thousands of lies, 34 felony convictions, a sexual assault conviction, and multiple pending criminal and civil cases, he has been embraced by Republicans. Their message seems to be, “Give us a bad man, not an old man.” They have turned the keys to their kingdom over to a crook—and if he wins the big show in November, a crook the Supreme Court has provided him with a get-out-of-jail free card. This partisan court—two members of which are facing impeachment proceedings—granted immunity for any official act Trump performs as president. It doesn’t get dicier than that when dealing with a narcissistic megalomaniac who thinks guardrails are for other people, and that everyone works for him. In the process of working his political black magic on the MAGA nation and the GOP, Trump has reduced once principled people into shipwrecks of their former selves. One of these strategic sycophants, J.D. Vance, is now Trump’s choice for vice-president. Before being seduced by the prospect of power, Vance was a "never-Trumper." Among a lot of other statements he made back in 2016, Vance referred to Trump as “cultural heroin,” and “unfit for our nation’s highest office.” To put a finer point on it, here’s what Vance told NPR about his now boss: “I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s obnoxious, and leading the white working class to a very dark place.” The Guardian obtained and published a private message Vance sent to a friend that captures just how far Vance has fallen since those days of staunch opposition to a politician he saw as dangerous. “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.” Borrowing from his own words, Vance is now Hitler’s helper. If he writes a sequel to his Hillbilly Elegy memoir, it should be called Hillbilly Hypocrite. Here’s a little of what the man who is now a heartbeat away from the presidency believes on a range of issues now that he has seen the light. Despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary, Vance says that the 2020 election was stolen, and that the rioters at the U.S. Capitol are “political prisoners” whose captivity is an “assault” on democracy. On a woman’s right to choose, Vance is a fundamentalist pro-lifer. “The question to me is really about the baby … above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have a right to life.” As for allowing abortion in exceptional cases involving incest or rape, Vance slammed the door. “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he lectured. Trump’s VP subscribes to the so-called “replacement theory” that believes white Americans are being systematically replaced by non-whites with grievous consequences for the GOP: “You’re talking about a shift in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we never win—Republicans would never win a national election in this country ever again.” Vance also gives Trump a thumb's up on his dubious plans for the environment to “drill, baby, drill.” He does not believe that climate change is driven by people, nor that the crisis the world is facing is in any way new or urgent. “I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused primarily by man. … It’s been changing, as others point out, it’s been changing for millennia.” And finally, on foreign affairs, Vance endorses Trump’s posture of American isolationism to the point of throwing Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy not under the bus, but under a Russian tank. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other.” Vance is not the only person whose credibility has been wiped out by grovelling to King Donald. Consider the sad case of Marco Rubio. “Little Marco,” as Trump called him, was once as implacable a foe of Trump as Vance. Back in the days when he was running against Trump for his party’s presidential nomination, he famously said, “Donald Trump will never be the nominee of the party of Lincoln and Reagan.” That was because Rubio also believed that Trump was “someone who has spent a career sticking it to the working people.” That Trump was “the most vulgar person” ever to seek the presidency. But that didn’t stop Rubio from ultimately bowing before Trump, and giving his endorsement. His explanation was as lame as an overloaded mule. “It’s time to get on with the work of beating Biden and saving America.” Really? With a person you described as a “con-man"? In a way, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is the most pathetic example of a politician who has lost her moral bearings. She was pulled out of her own orbit by the gravitational force of Trumpism. When she was running against him, she described Trump as “unfit” and “unhinged," a man whose actions would be “harshly judged” by history. But that didn’t stop her from offering her oleaginous endorsement of the unfit and unhinged at the party’s Milwaukee, Wisc., convention last week. No wonder the MAGA crowd booed. They weren’t buying her strategic conversion to Trump on the road to the 2024 election. If not Haley, then who were the delegates buying? The presence of people either fresh from jail, or likely headed there over their connection with Trump. People like Paul Manafort, Trump’s ex-campaign chief, who went to prison for massive financial fraud, and Rudy Giuliani, who faces multiple charges in the election subversion case. Giuliani was recently disbarred in New York State for spreading lies about alleged fraud in the 2020 election. And then there was the star of the felon parade. Peter Navarro came directly to the Milwaukee convention after his release from federal prison in Miami, Fla. He was sent to jail for four months for failing to respond to a subpoena from the Jan. 6, 2021, committee looking into the attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Navarro received a hero’s welcome from the convention that had just made another felon their 2024 presidential nominee. When he took the stage, his words were music to the ears of a crowd that thinks that the rule of law is the dark hand of the deep state. “If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful. They will come for you.” Fear ringed by anger is the Trumpian moon of the new GOP. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times

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Fear ringed by anger defines the new GOP

Trump has reduced once-principled people into shipwrecks of their former selves.

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