The GOP’s Autoimmune Disorder

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

 

The lab work is done, the data are in, and the diagnosis is clear: The institutional Republican Party has a chronic autoimmune disorder. Alarmingly, the affliction is multifaceted. On some occasions, it leads the body to ignore, or even to invite in, serious threats to its survival. On others, it triggers a pernicious overactivity that causes the body to turn inwards and attack itself. At present, there seems little hope for a cure.

 

Traditionally, healthy organisms are both willing and able to fight off the hazards that appear on the horizon. Scouring the middle distance for signs of impending peril, they spot a virus or a toxin or bunch of bacteria sneaking into the bloodstream, and they send out their best troops to destroy it. A candidate whom 64 percent of voters oppose? Zap. A whiny loser who blew a winnable race and then lied about it? Pow. A woman who ought by rights to be in a lunatic asylum? Splat. Alas, in its current condition, the Republican Party is able to do no such thing. Instead, it reasons that if its antibodies are against a given object, then that object must be doing something right. Worse yet, it never learns from its mistakes. The more lethal the venom, the less it does to fight it. Donald Trump’s first indictment prompted the GOP’s primary voters to put out a welcome sign. They injected his fourth indictment directly into their bloodstream.

 

The party’s self-destructive overactivity provides a perfect complement to this flaw. Typically, an immunoglobulin that showed resilience, strength, or versatility would be cherished and protected as vital to the cause. Brian Kemp, who won by eight points in Georgia? Recruits — follow him. Ron DeSantis, who won by 19 points in Florida? Perhaps we could use him elsewhere? Tim Scott, who is liked almost universally? A brigade of those guys would come in handy. Sadly, though, the GOP’s metastasizing malady turns such logic on its head, causing it to consider anyone who has gained the trust of the public to be intrinsically suspicious and therefore worthy of attack. In combination, these two symptoms lead to the worst of both worlds. Despite knowing at some level that it is hemorrhaging profusely, the party continues to welcome its saboteurs and to assault its friends — all while insisting that the medicine that might reverse its decline has been tarnished by specters of the night.

 

Had Indiana Jones been a Republican, he would have died within 19 seconds of his run along the traps. To get to the treasure he sought, Jones was obliged to avoid pitfalls, dodge halberds, evade spikes, run from rolling boulders, and duck under — or around — anything that might plausibly have been put there to kill him. Once upon a time, the Republican Party understood how to do this, too. Now, it would be more likely to run straight at full speed into the first sharp spear it came across while shouting, “This will surely own the libs!” What, bar a total lack of interest in self-advancement or self-preservation, could explain the choices that the GOP made in 2022? What, other than a persistent death wish, could account for its continued indulgence of figures such as Blake Masters, Joe Kent, and Kari Lake? What, beyond a catastrophic misunderstanding of the environment in which it is operating, could justify the ongoing strength of the toxic Donald Trump?

 

Is there a doctor out there who can provide a cure? Thus far, the prospects seem slim. In three consecutive elections, the voters of the United States have written the Republican Party a prescription, and, three times in a row, the Republican Party has failed even to fill it, preferring instead to seek out the advice of the quacks, shamans, and witches who, in exchange for a few fractured pieces of the party’s soul, will happily tell it that there is no need for it to take its medicine, for if it just waits long enough, the sickness of other convalescents might deliver the world on a plate — and, besides, whatever the remedy might be, it is guaranteed to be more injurious than the disease.