Republican Stockholm Syndrome

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

 

Donald Trump is the recent beneficiary of a cascade of endorsements from Republican lawmakers in Congress. True, Trump’s last two campaigns for the White House taught political observers that endorsements aren’t the measure of voters’ support they once were. But the rationale Trump’s endorsers provide to explain their advocacy on behalf of the one-term president is revealing.

 

According to Florida representative Greg Steube, one of the first Florida Republicans to join the ritual humiliation its members meted out to his state’s governor, predicated his decision to bet the future of his party and his country on Trump because the former president is accessible in ways Governor Ron DeSantis did not. Indeed, Trump called Steube in a courtesy call while he was convalescing in the hospital following an accident. Meanwhile, “to this day, I have not heard from Gov. DeSantis,” Steube complained.

 

Steube isn’t out on a limb. Florida representative Byron Donalds insisted that Trump is the “one leader at this time in our nation’s history who can seize the moment and deliver what we need.” Fellow Floridian Carlos Gimenez backed Trump’s efforts to “fight socialism both at home and abroad.” Representative Michael Waltz threw his support behind Trump as a statement of general opposition to “the systemic targeting of Americans with conservative ideals, especially” the former president.

 

ChatGPT could have drafted this flavorless, generic pablum. These endorsements certainly don’t highlight a unique facility that no other Republican but Trump could bring to the table.

 

Trump has repaid the generosity of his Florida endorsers by accusing them of representing a bleak, fetid hellscape of a state. The Sunshine State is marred by crime and drugs, overrun by migrants, and rendered unaffordable by high taxes and no opportunity for economic advancement. The embarrassment the former president has meted out to his obsequious supporters couldn’t have come as a surprise. This is the price of admission into Trump’s orbit.

 

In his endorsement statement, Texas representative Lance Gooden insisted that Trump remains “the only leader who can save America from the leftist onslaught we are currently facing.” No mention was made of the fact that this “leftist onslaught” was facilitated by the former president’s defeat in 2020, his poisoning of the well in Georgia in 2021, and the dismal performance his hand-picked candidates in open races turned in last year, transforming a historically encouraging political environment for the GOP into a profound disappointment.

 

One former Republican politician backing Trump — an act of conviction so bold the lawmaker declined to be identified — let slip that Trump himself is immaterial. Relitigating the internecine debates within the GOP in the 2010s to assess Trump’s “comeback chances” represents the pathway toward “redemption.” Who’s “redemption?” Maybe Trump’s, but more likely the party members who stuck with him at great personal cost and with little, so far, in the way of reward.

 

Senator J. D. Vance confirmed that his support for Trump should be viewed less as support for Trump and more as a thumb in the eye of the prevailing culture in the press. “Every year, the media writes Donald Trump’s political obituary,” he said back in February. “And every year, we’re quickly reminded that Trump remains the most popular figure in the Republican Party.”

 

As of early Monday, Trump had secured the support of ten U.S. Senators and 55 Republicans in the House. By the end of the day, Trump had won the endorsement of what may be the most perplexing of his endorsements so far: the current chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Montana senator Steve Daines. But why? “The best four years I’ve had in the U.S. Senate was when President Trump was serving in the Oval Office,” he told the former president’s son, Don Trump Jr., on his podcast. So, at least Senator Daines was having a blast while the Republican Party sacrificed the control of all the levers of power in Washington in record time.

 

The flimsy rationale and boilerplate language these Republicans offer papers over the obvious liabilities the former president brings to the table — not just in the race for the White House but the crucial down-ballot contests, which Republicans cast in Trump’s mold have shown a particular knack for losing. The most candid of these Republican endorsements reveal that the interests these GOP lawmakers are serving are theirs. If you’re a Republican voter with interests you’d like to see advanced by winning politicians supported by a mandate from the electorate, their interests are not yours.