The conclusion of an excellent article about the corruption of the Republican Party that led to trump's election, and the ensuing corruption of Republican leaders. nybooks.com/daily/2020/08/…
“ ‘Congress no longer operates as an independent branch of government, but as an appendage of the executive branch,’ the moderate Republican and former House representative Tom Davis told The New York Times in January 2020.
“Four years after Trump won the Republican nomination, the GOP has become a personalist ruler’s dream: a party solely dedicated to defending and promoting the leader, no matter what he says and does.
“No price, even the mass death of Americans from the president’s willful mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, seems too high to pay to keep the pact of silence about the leader’s criminality and unfitness for office that maintains him in power.
“With the authoritarian’s personal needs and desires setting the tone for political life, it is all too tempting to focus all blame on him. And that is routinely what happens when such rulers inevitably exit office.
“Yet, as the former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens asserts in his new book, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, it would be a mistake to conclude that Trump had somehow simply hijacked the GOP.
“The Republican Party had already become a laboratory for American autocracy, a vehicle for power combining a base of white supremacists and gun-rights extremists …
“with leaders like McConnell who had long approved of subverting voting rights and other democratic procedures to maintain their privileges and authority.
“The GOP was already becoming ‘Trumpian’ even before Trump himself appeared to complete its self-destruction as a democratic party.
“Enticing and intimidating individuals into becoming their worst selves as willing collaborators is what authoritarians do best. On this count, Trump has succeeded magnificently.”
