The Retribution Election

By Noah Rothman

Monday, December 11, 2023

 

There are no perfect analogies, but the one that I think comes closest to describing the dynamic that has prevailed within the Republican coalition from 2016 on is illustrated by a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987).

 

You might remember it. Dutifully chronicling events as he stands over a mass grave filled with the lye-covered bodies of North Vietnamese Army regulars, Vietcong, civilians — we cannot know which — a soldierly Matthew Modine is confronted by the inexplicably irate Pogue Colonel, played by the late Bruce Boa. “What’s that supposed to be? Some kind of sick joke?” Boa asks, struggling to reconcile Modine’s peace-symbol button with the phrase “born to kill” written on his helmet. “I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir,” Modine reluctantly replies. Boa is as befuddled by his counterpart’s sartorial choices as he is by the logic that inspired them. “Whose side are you on, son?” he asks after an exasperated beat. “How about getting with the program? Why don’t you jump on the team and come in for the big win?”

 

This interchange encapsulates a condition familiar to Republican voters of a particular disposition. Modine isn’t a conscientious objector. He isn’t railing against Hubert Humphrey in the streets of Chicago or fabricating improvised nail bombs in a basement with the Weather Underground. He’s on the front lines of the war. And yet, he hasn’t abandoned a certain discomfort with how the cause he supports with his presence is being prosecuted. For Pogue Colonel, that just does not compute. To him, either you’ve given your whole mind, body, and spirit to the campaign, or you’re on the wrong side of it. Even cosmetic displays of dissent and the challenge they present to the esprit de corps are unacceptable and, indeed, incomprehensible. “Whose side are you on?”

 

This vignette is redolent of how the vast majority of Republican voters relate to the modest rump of dissenters against the prospect of a third Trump nomination. The forecast apparent in the latest survey of Iowa’s Republican voters conducted by Selzer & Co. for NBC News and the Des Moines Register suggests that dynamic is about to become even more pronounced. Republicans are unpersuaded by the Matthew Modines in their midst. They just want to get on with it.

 

The poll found that Republicans have gravitated toward Trump over the last two months, but Trump did little to engineer his good fortune. While Trump’s opponents were being rewarded for their aggressive campaigning with the endorsements of well-funded organizational powerhouses and respected political influencers and elected officials, the front-runner merely heckled from the rally stage or the courthouse steps. And that was sufficient to satisfy Republicans. Trump’s support among Iowa primary voters has grown by eight points since October. Seventy-three percent say Trump can beat Biden, up from 65 percent two months ago. The number of GOP voters who say Trump’s legal woes are an obstacle to victory next November declined from 32 to 24 percent in the same period. Trump’s favorability among Republicans increased from 66 to 72 percent.

 

The findings dovetail with the results of last week’s Monmouth University poll of GOP primary voters. In that survey, 63 percent of Trump supporters told pollsters that there is no need for a primary and his opponents should acknowledge their inevitable defeat. Since Trump maintains the support of 58 percent of GOP voters, it’s fair to say that coronating Trump is what the majority of Republicans wants. The minority opposed to Trump’s summary enthronement are obstacles in the way of the business at hand: defeating Joe Biden in what is sure to be the most existentially significant election of our lifetimes, with no less than the viability of the American experiment hanging in the balance.

 

Many if not most of those Republicans want to hasten the post-primary reconciliation process and focus the party’s energies on the “big win,” the inevitable victory over Joe Biden and the Democrats next November. Others are motivated by Donald Trump’s foremost animating impulse — the one he is most enthused by and expends most of his energies previewing: retribution. Revenge against the Democrats will come later, if at all. The first order of business will be punishing their fellow Republicans.

 

The ineluctable logic of the retribution campaign is one that culminates in a humiliation for Trump’s Republican doubters. Those who criticized his conduct between Election Day 2020 and Inauguration Day 2021, in particular, will be made to prostrate themselves before the architect of their shame. They will be compelled to confess their apostasy and submit to the verdict of their vanquishers. The already-nebulous line between insubordinate “deep staters” and the deviationists, wreckers, and saboteurs within the Republican firmament will be blurred further, exposing all on either side of it to reprisal. Even the old comrades are not safe. No slight will be overlooked, no departure from the party line forgotten.

 

Among Trump’s cadre of political professionals, the imperative to exact retribution against perfidious elements on the right will take on added urgency if only because these are the sort who recognize electoral victory over Democrats is no sure thing. There will be many bites at that apple. The satisfaction of their vindication will have to be maintained through what remains of the primary calendar, through Trump’s trials, through his likely conviction on at least some counts of malfeasance, and through the nominating convention, where some hare-brained scheme to save the party from its descent into a personality cult will have to be dispatched.

 

The fervid passions that presaged a post-Trump moment for the GOP will be anathematized. The pangs of guilt over the events of January 6 will be condemned. The riot was the work of FBI plants, Antifa agitators — and after all, it wasn’t that big of a deal. The prudential concerns that the MAGA movement had achieved diminishing returns after the 2022 midterms will be attacked. Trump’s hand-picked candidates probably only underperformed because Trump himself wasn’t on the ballot — and after all, imagine how moribund the party would be in Trump’s absence.

 

The cognitive obstacles to reconciling with the fullness of the Trump-skeptical Right’s defeat must be broken down. Those who cling to them have adopted a psychological disposition that is at odds with their best interests and those of the party. That “duality” must be crushed. This is both a necessary political project and a desirable one from the perspective of those doing the crushing.

 

We know how all this worked out for Modine. By executing a defeated Vietcong terrorist, he won victory over himself. He gave the full measure of devotion to the team, validating the compromises already demanded of his teammates in the process. That exhibition signaled that his internal struggle was over. “Hardcore, man.”