Donald Trump inspires yet another profile in cowardice
Jackie Calmes
A kerfuffle in Grand Rapids, Mich., in recent days revealed a grim truth about America’s institutions in these troubled times: Too many of them lack the courage to stand up to the threat to democracy that is Donald Trump, thereby contributing to the alarming staying power of the once and perhaps future president.
We already know about the failure of the main institutional players in this constitutional crisis: those atop the Republican Party. “Political parties are democracy’s gatekeepers,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote in their 2018 bestseller, “How Democracies Die,” which documented how the once-Grand Old Party abandoned that role to enable the rise of the demagogic would-be authoritarian.
Republican “leaders” at all levels recognized in 2016 the danger Trump represented, and yet, fearing his and his followers’ vitriol, mostly kept mum rather than form a united, vocal front against his nomination. Traditional Republicans who joined the Trump administration naively rationalized that they’d be good influences on the erratic president, only to learn who was boss. Trump critics turned into sycophants (here’s looking at you, Lindsey Graham), even after the disgrace of Jan. 6. When Congress fulfilled its institutional duty and impeached Trump, Republican senators acquitted him. The criminal justice system indicted the ex-president multiple times, but Republican judges and Supreme Court justices are forcing trial delays.
Meanwhile, many in corporate America — for all their talk of civic responsibility — stifled their evident horror at various Trump antics in return for tax cuts and fewer federal regulations. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers issued a challenge early in Trump’s tenure: “If CEOs who employ hundreds of thousands of people are not in a position to speak truth to power, who is going to be?” Yes, who?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/calmes-donald-trump-inspires-yet-100053725.html
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If the Repukes had just stood up to him as a united front, they would have dispatched him before the first primary. But very few tried and there was no unity. The ones who tried oppose him either got their careers trashed, or they fell in line with the other ass-kissers.
Chump wasn't smart enough to pull this off by himself. There had to be some powerful mojo (or maybe it was blackmail?) behind the scenes to get the Repukes to accept Chump's candidacy. Without a doubt John Boehner and Paul Ryan knew more than they've ever said about Chump muscling in and grabbing power in 2016.
The Repukes have been practically leaderless for a long time. Even Reagan wasn't much of a leader, he was just an actor who got up to the microphones and said what they told him to say.
