Mike Pence and Nikki Haley struggle to escape the pull of the Trump vortex
Those who would succeed Donald Trump as the leader of the GOP find themselves in an eternally awkward position. The profound ways Trump changed their party, and the hold he continues to exert on its base, make it difficult to impossible for them to do the very things necessary to stake a plausible claim to party leadership and assemble an electoral majority in 2024.
Above all, they must pledge fealty to some basic propositions with near-messianic intensity: Trump’s most consequential failures were glorious triumphs. The problems he created for the GOP actually make the party monumentally great. And rather than hamstringing their ability to win votes, he is the only hope they have.
Some new moves by would-be Trump successors Mike Pence and Nikki Haley illustrate the depth of the problem. Let’s start with the former vice president, who is desperate to show that he’s a man of strength, yet can’t help but demonstrate that his service for Trump has rendered him a craven weakling.
Story continues below advertisement
In a Monday interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Pence tried to minimize his one moment in office when he showed something resembling fortitude and courage.
In Pence’s telling, the violent Jan. 6 effort to overthrow the election was reduced to “one day in January.” The media talks about it only to “demean the character and intentions of 74 million Americans” who voted for Trump, Pence declared.
Pence might have portrayed this as a fateful moment when he demonstrated the (somewhat qualified) courage to rebuff Trump’s pleas to declare him the winner. But he cannot: All Republicans are required to characterize Jan. 6 as either a justified (if overenthusiastic) response to a stolen or suspect election, or an inconsequential episode being hyped only by the Trump-hating media.
Story continues below advertisement
You’d think it would still loom large for Pence that rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” after Trump inspired them to go terrorize him. But precisely because it was Pence’s most courageous moment — when he finally stood up to Trump — he must beg for it to be ignored. Indeed, Trump still tells audiences Pence lacked the “courage” to participate in Trump’s coup, compounding the humiliation.
As much as any other GOP figure, Pence enabled one of Trump’s most transformative legacies, the elevating of anxious masculinity to new heights. While Republicans have long fetishized performative displays of manhood, Trump ratcheted this up into a drama of dominance that requires others to submit to abject degradation.
No one volunteered more enthusiastically than Pence. He was always there to offer embarrassingly obsequious praise (of Trump’s shoulder width) and even flattering mimicry (remember those water bottles?).
Story continues below advertisement
Which is fine for a second banana, but it doesn’t mark you for leadership. Pence’s dilemma now is that, after four years of unrivaled lickspittlery, his one moment of courage is the very thing he must memory-hole.
Or take Haley, the former U.N. ambassador under Trump. Haley has given a new interview to the Wall Street Journal that indicates how she’ll work around Trump while exploring a presidential run herself.
Above all, what emerges is this: It is absolutely essential to continue pledging fealty to the idea that Trump’s impact on the GOP was gloriously transformative, in an overwhelmingly if not uniformly sublime way.
But Haley also wants distance from some of the depraved and destructive things Trump actually did, to preserve the option of becoming a post-Trump figure with broad appeal.
Story continues below advertisement
How to square this circle? Easy: Condemn all the negatives in our politics that Trump unleashed or exacerbated, but only in abstract, general terms, while erasing the fact that Trump himself was the author of them.
So Haley praises Trump’s general impact on the GOP, claiming: “We need him in the Republican Party. I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.”
This is similar to Republicans like Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.), who have called on other Republicans to mute criticism of Trump’s effort to overturn democracy, ostensibly to avoid disturbing the hallowed process by which he continues to bring “working class” voters into the GOP.
Story continues below advertisement
Yet Haley does want to distance herself from those efforts to subvert democracy. So she also declares “there was fraud in the election” but stresses there was not enough to impact the outcome. There wasn’t significant fraud, but beyond that, note that Haley won’t say Trump is responsible for spreading the poisonous lie that fraud was decisive.
And Haley does want distance from Trump’s ferocious stoking of racial conflict. So she declares Republicans must affirm that people should be “judged by actions, not color,” and that discrimination should be “ended.” But Haley depicts the left as the real enemy of those principles, and says nothing about Trump’s remaking of the GOP in his own racist and white nationalist image.
Magically, in both cases, Trump’s own role — in subverting democracy, and emboldening racist and white nationalist impulses inside the GOP — is simply erased. Thus Haley can continue hewing to the idea that Trump’s impact on the GOP has been something worthy of awe and praise.
Uniquely, even after losing badly in 2020, not only does Trump still have the party in his grip, but his very transformation of it makes it impossible for successors to correct the things he did. Even if Trump doesn’t run in 2024, he’ll continue making life miserable for GOP politicians — and all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.