GOP: GOING, GOING, GOING,

…GONE? Well, not literally.

Politicians can always call themselves Republicans, so the Republican Party (in name only) can pretend it is still the Party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, but it isn't anymore. Not by a long shot.

Whether those Republicans who are aghast at what their Party has become—the Liz Cheneys, the Larry Hogans, the Mitt Romneys, the Adam Kinzingers, the Paul Ryans, the Rusty Bowers, the Asa Hutchinsons, and scores of others—can redeem a Party that has strayed so far from traditional Republican principles remains to be seen, but it looks doubtful.

This much is certain. There is little about the current trajectory of the Republican Party that has anything to do with Republican principles or Republican history. On the contrary, what animates the Republican Party today, sadly, is the very antithesis of what the Party's greatest personalities brought to the American experiment. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan would turn over in their graves to see what has become of their Party.

I write this as someone who, for a half-century, was a center-right Republican who, many years ago, was privileged to work as a strategist in the campaign that produced the greatest congressional upset in the nation. That was when Larry Hogan, the father of the immediate past governor of Maryland, flipped that state's fifth congressional district, the presumed safest Democratic congressional district in the country, from Democrat to Republican. Republican Larry Hogan in 1968 embraced a theme similarly embraced by Democrat John Kennedy a decade earlier: sometimes, party loyalty asks too much. This seems to be a lesson that today's Republican Party is too self-absorbed, fearful, or ignorant to absorb. They neglect this lesson at their own and the nation's political peril. I write this as a former Republican who has watched the GOP morph into a textbook personality cult that has unabashedly pledged fidelity to a pretender. Trump, who worked mightily to weaponize the Justice Department against an American presidential election and the peaceful transfer of power in America, has the temerity to accuse that same Justice Department of being weaponized when it has taken steps to hold him to account.

   Many of today's Republicans have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump, in great measure, because they hope they can ride to victory in his wake. They fail to understand that his wake is really a whirlpool, a suck-hole, that can drag them under, if not the country. In great measure, they have tied their political future to an election denier who has attempted to scuttle the peaceful transfer of power in America in a crude and blatant effort to hold on to power after losing an election. These pseudo-Republicans hunger for his praise and live in dreadful fear of his wrath. They may all wear Republican lapel pins, but they are pretenders like the piper they follow. They will, ultimately, go the way of all pretenders, and they may well destroy a once proud party in the process.

Donald Trump considered being beaten in the 2020 election by Joe Biden as an unthinkable embarrassment. Nonetheless, he was beaten. He was beaten by seven million votes, which really shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, Hillary Clinton also beat Trump (by nearly three million votes)—just not in the states that would give her a victory in the Electoral College. Trump is, on balance, a popular-vote loser, and he just can't get his head around that. He demands to be popular, or at least to be loved or feared, and the fact that he could lose and lose by millions just doesn't compute in his head. Trump hates losers, so he will never admit that he is one; indeed, he cannot acknowledge that he is a loser, so trashing an election, a critic, or anyone who opposes him, whether Democrat or Republican, is instinctive to Donald Trump. No one should be surprised.

But here's the thing. In business, when Trump failed, as he did several times, he simply trashed his contractors and lenders. When he has failed in politics, he has demonstrated a now predictable willingness to wreck the country, its constitution, its government, and most certainly, anyone who is a political opponent.

He will fail, but his failure will also portend the failure of the Republican Party, my old Party, because the Party has bet the house on Trump. To some extent, the Republicans have made this poor wager out of poor judgment and, perhaps, out of fear. It is a mistake of historic proportions. Trump is and has been, a loser for the Republican Party. He lost the popular vote both times he ran for President. In the 2018 midterm elections, the Republicans lost 43 seats in Congress, and in 2020, the Democrats won 222 seats in the House, to the Republicans 213 seats. While Republicans and many prognosticators were predicting a red tide in the 2022 midterm elections when the so-called out-of-power party is generally expected to make significant gains, the Republicans managed to win only a nine-vote majority, which is the slimmest house margin in nearly 100 years.

The better angels of which the Party's first President, Abraham Lincoln, once spoke are far and few in between in GOP land. Trump has driven nearly all Republicans who talk against him from the Party. The hulk of the Party that is left has forfeited its moral authority to a pretender. With the ever-growing accumulation of criminal and civil charges against Trump about to be adjudicated by juries of his peers, he may soon be diminished to a sad footnote in the history of a great country, and the Republican Party may be terminally consigned to a footnote as well.   

Please consider our Of Thee I Sing 1776 Premium option. While my weekly column is always free, for just $5/month, you’ll also receive my annual ebook, “Essays For Our Time,” and my new Podcasts. My recent podcasts have featured my commentary on the Trump Documents Indictment, the Fox Corp Settlement, The CNN Trump Town Hall, the Hunter Biden plea deal, The New American Cult of Personality, and my interviews with:

William Bratton, Retired Chief of Police, New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston

Rikki Klieman, Attorney, Network News Analyst, and best-selling author

John Thoresen, Executive Director, Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center

Katherine Gehl, co-author of The Politics Industry and founder of the Institute for Political Innovation

Jazz artist Ann Hampton Callaway

Outlander author Diana Gabaldon

AI Data Scientist Lawrence Kite

Ryan Clancy, Chief Strategist of No Labels

Senator Barbara Boxer

Senator Joe Lieberman

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan

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