Wanted: Republican with some backbone to stand up to Trump
Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., became the first Democrat to throw her proverbial hat in the ring. She’s a dynamic candidate with a winning message, and she’d make a great president, but she’s not alone in itching to challenge Donald Trump in 2020.
There are so many potential Democratic candidates for 2020 that the challenge for the Democratic National Committee will be in finding a stage big enough to hold them all. In 2016, Republicans had so many contenders they were forced to schedule two different debates the same night, the varsity and junior varsity. In 2020, Democrats will have to stage three — the varsity, junior varsity and middle-school debate.
By my count, there are 32 Democrats planning to run in 2020: Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Sherrod Brown, Amy Klobuchar, Richard Blumenthal, Chris Murphy and Jeff Merkley; Congress members Tim Ryan, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Seth Moulton and Eric Swalwell; former Congressmen Julian Castro and Beto O’Rourke; former Vice President Joe Biden and former Attorney General Eric Holder; Govs. Jay Inslee, Steve Bullock and John Hickenlooper; former Goves. Terry McAuliffe and Martin O’Malley; Mayors Eric Garcetti, Mitch Landrieu and Pete Buttigieg; businessmen Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, Howard Schultz and Mark Cuban; and West Virginia state Sen. Richard Ojeda.
So, there’ll be no difficulty finding a Democrat eager to take on Trump in 2020. The bigger question is: Will there be a Republican willing to do so in the GOP primary? Prospects don’t look good.
Only John Kasich has publicly entertained the idea, and even he says he won’t run unless he’s sure he could win. Jeff Flake, Trump’s erstwhile Arizona critic, disqualified himself by voting for everything Trump wanted.
Any discussion of how leading Republicans have responded to Trump would have to be titled “Profiles in Cowardice.” Trump wasn’t even a lifelong Republican. He espoused views anathema to Republicans, like tariffs, deficit spending and proPutin. He’s a serial adulterer, a compulsive liar and a Twitter bully. He was denounced by fellow Republicans in 2016 as a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral” (Ted Cruz), a “dangerous con man” (Marco Rubio) and a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who should have been kicked out of the Republican Party (Lindsey Graham).
Yet, once he was in office, Republicans lined up behind Trump like he was the Second Coming.
What happened? Three factors. For one, they’re afraid of him. Afraid that — were they to publicly break with Trump — he’d not only attack them on Twitter, he’d line up a Trumper to run against them in their next primary.
Second, most Republican lawmakers don’t really care about Trump’s disgusting personal behavior. He can call women “dogs.” He can accuse Barack Obama of treason. He can brag about sexually assaulting women and getting away with it. He can pay a stripper $130,000 not to talk about an affair. They don’t care. As long as Trump appoints conservative judges and approves tax cuts for the rich, they’re happy.
Third, they’re only in it for the short term. I thought of this when reading “American Dialogue,” Joseph Ellis’ profound new book on the Founding Fathers. How did such an incredibly talented group of individuals suddenly appear in so sparsely populated colonies? Part of the answer, Ellis points out, is that the Founders were obsessed with what future generations would think about them. That’s why they wrote so many treatises and saved their letters. That’s one reason George Washington freed his slaves, because he knew the failure to do so would forever stain his reputation.
“They were, in effect, on their best behavior,” Ellis concludes, “because they knew we would be watching.”
Not this gang of Republican leaders. They’re not interested in the long-term good of the nation; they’re only interested in the immediate political payoff. But they still can’t escape the judgment of history.
No doubt, looking back on this time, presidential historians will rank Trump as our worst president ever. But he’ll still come off looking better than today’s Republican leaders who dared not stand up against him.