The summer of 2017 was a fraught time for the country. Donald Trump and his goons were hard at work seeping into the executive branch’s levers of power. I wrote a disorganized post lamenting the tragedies of the unfolding administration, titled The Party of Faust, a title whose thesis is worth expounding on further in hindsight.
“Faust” is a German legend dating approximately to the 16th century. The details differ slightly between versions of the story, but generally, Faust makes a pact with the Devil, gaining knowledge and power in exchange for his immortal soul. Through this tragedy, the word “Faustian” broadly refers to making a choice for gain without regard for future consequences.
My partially articulated point 6 years ago (also made here), was that the Republican Party came to rally behind Trump in 2016, despite his comical unfitness, because to abandon him once he received the nomination would have risked the conservative movement’s bid for power. The nominee is the only person capable of funneling a right wing agenda, and discouraging support for Trump would have depressed down ticket races nationwide in critical swing seats.
2016 was the first pivotal moment in the GOP’s Faustian Bargain. The Party apparatus and its media apparatchiks were often conflicted during the primary because they recognized his perils, but ultimately most that expressed reservations came around or kept quiet, especially in the run up to the general election. Then Trump pulled off the unthinkable and defeated Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most hated figure in GOP lore.
Trump is an authoritarian, but he does not have a coherent ideological capacity with which to pursue a clear or articulate agenda by himself. He is a creature of low attention span television culture and grievance politics. His agenda and priorities while in office were molded by others.
The most immediate reward from Trump’s victory was that the GOP could capitalize on the Supreme Court seat Mitch McConnell denied Obama after the death of Justice Scalia. Stacking the Court meant that the dream of gutting reproductive rights through Roe v. Wade could be realized. Then GOP congressional ushered in a cookie-cutter Republican agenda: tax cuts for the wealthy and an attempted repeal of Obamacare. This was the meat and bones of the Trump Administration.
It is this cookie-cutter Republican policymaking that further coalesced GOP support behind Trump after the election. The moral hazard paid off! Tax cuts, overturning Roe v. Wade, and gutting health care for poor folks, oh boy. Elected officials made excuses and moved goal posts constantly for Trump’s scandals, indecency, and corruption of all shapes and sizes because they now hitched their wagon of success to his. “How I learned to not give a shit and love Trump unconditionally” could be the memoir title of most Republicans during this time.
Trump’s miraculous victory snatched from the jaws of defeat in 2016 created a mythos that permeated the Party’s rank and file, as well as media perception around Trump’s time in office. Trump’s defiant victory in the face of conventional wisdom led to the conservative movement to get behind Trump at every turn. Because after all, everyone in the mainstream press counted Trump out. Wasn’t it worth tossing aside the biased concerns about Trump coming from those who said he could never win and were against him anyway?
And since 2016, this mythos was treated to being repeatedly dunked in a toilet. The Republican Party under Trump’s leadership suffered electoral defeats ranging from crushing to embarrassing up and down the ballot across the country in the 2018 midterms, 2019 special elections, the 2020 election, the 2022 midterms and recently special elections in 2023. All of these failed elections were dragged down by the stench of MAGA politics repelling voters.
But all of these electoral shellackings of the GOP were not inevitable. At every turn, Trump has shown what a terrible scumbag he is and antithetical to many of the values held by the Party for generations. Numerous conservative politicians are better qualified, more effective, less repulsive, and have shown they could dramatically outperform Trump electorally.
In the summer of 2019, Trump tried extorting Ukraine by way of conditioning military aid in exchange for Ukraine providing assistance to smear Joe Biden for the 2020 election. He was caught red handed. Republicans had the opportunity to support his impeachment and remove him from office for grossly corrupt behavior. Instead, they demurred, made excuses, and parroted his lies.
Trump would of course go on to lose the 2020 election. Instead of conceding, Trump fomented sycophantic delusion in every corner of the Republican Party that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He then conducted a multi-state crime spree to overturn the results of the election via the electoral college, culminating in January 6th. Morally upstanding Republicans could have cried uncle and supported Trump’s impeachment and removal to finally punish Trump and move the country forward. But GOP congressional leadership delayed Trump’s second impeachment trial to provide him cover, and since then have assisted in whitewashing the events leading up to January 6th. The failure to treat this period like the treachery it was has poisoned the Republican Party with widespread anti-democratic conspiracy mongering and lies.
And then in 2022, Trump’s Florida club was raided by the FBI, which uncovered extraordinary mishandling, concealment, or destruction of troves of extremely classified documents. Given the relentless propaganda peddled during the 2016 election regarding Clinton’s misuse of a private email server, Republicans could reasonably have saved face and finally kicked Trump to the curb for such obvious crimes. Alas, no such salvation from rank hypocrisy came.
Despite facing many dozens of state and federal charges, Trump is the clear front runner for the GOP nomination in a desperate bid to recapture the presidency, if only to halt the threat of his prospective incarceration. His staying power with the Party and its voters is a direct result of the Party’s effort to normalize his openly authoritarian ambitions and crimes. By failing to put a check Trump at every possible turn, it has made everything Trump does permissible. Those that aren’t diehard MAGA lunatics are trapped by a sunken cost fallacy or unfathomable cognitive dissonance. Such is how the Party’s Faustian bargain continues.
The lack of condemnation or direction has led to this moment where the Republican primary for 2024 was already decided before it began. The runner-ups behind Trump in the GOP primary field are only plausible in an alternate reality. Their critiques of Trump, if they exist at all, are half-hearted at best. And to show for it, Trump polls higher than all of them combined, and none of them are worth discussing further. Despite everything, these runner-ups have pledged their fealty to Trump if he wins the nomination. Even if the party had the desire to rebel against Trump and spike from the process, he would clearly demolish the GOP with a run as a third-party/independent candidate. To divide the conservative movement like this would be an electoral disaster for the GOP of biblical proportions.
Had Republicans shown any semblance of a spine in the past eight years, history suggests that it would have paid off for themselves and the country. In 1974, Richard Nixon, under intense pressure from the fallout from his own crime sprees, only resigned the presidency because Republicans in Congress stood against him. For their principled stand, the Republican Party was rewarded by the fact that the brazen corruption of the President did not destroy the Party for a generation. Indeed, although Republicans would go on to lose the 1976 Presidential election, they would come back just four years later to usher in the storied Reagan era and three straight terms of control of the Presidency. Such courage, strategic thinking, and dare I say patriotism is literally unimaginable in today’s GOP, which has passed on every opportunity for redemption.
The total capture of the Republican Party by Trump means that his odds of winning back the presidency are depressingly modest despite everything. There is simply nothing Trump could do to shake partisan loyalty. There is no bar low enough. Stay tuned for Part III of the Faustian bargain and probable final act of the Trump era. Maybe Trump finds himself winning back the helm of the nation in an even more unhinged and deranged state than before; maybe Trump and the GOP suffer their deserved brutal defeat, and conservatives will at least have the opportunity for desperately needed recalibration.
But even when Trump is someday blissfully gone, his presence has fundamentally altered the Republican Party and conservative political culture for the worse. The authoritarian mindset he came out of and fanned portents a new norm, and the threats to democracy unleashed in the Trump era will never truly diminish without a proper reckoning. The more successive beatdowns of Trump and his ilk, the better. But Democrats cannot win elections forever. And each time the pendulum swings back, I fear the consequences of the Republican Party’s soul bartering will continue to be reaped by us all.
As AJ Thinks 