March 19, 2024 | Reading Time: 4 minutes
Conservative elites can’t control Trump. Now they’re bailing
Democracy is now the only thing that can save their elite status.
I am not a historian, but one of the things I have learned from reading history is that fascists around the world can’t do what they want without the help of conservative elites. If they think demagogues like Donald Trump are just clowns they can control, the clowns win in the end. If they don’t, however, they don’t.
I don’t know if we have arrived at a moment in which conservative elites have stopped giving Trump the full benefit of the doubt, but we are nonetheless seeing a number lining up against him – and not just the usual folks, like former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney. On Friday, former Vice President Mike Pence said he would not endorse Trump. He based that decision on explicitly conservative grounds.
No vice president has ever said his old running mate is unworthy of his support. His decision, moreover, follows a slew of former Trump administration officials who have openly criticized him or stayed mum. According to the Post’s Aaron Blake, only a third of his former cabinet members are aligned with him. Fewer have endorsed him. Some, like former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, have called him a security risk. Blake wrote that others are conspicuous by their absence, including Mick Mulvaney, Alex Azar, Betsy DeVos, Elaine Chao, Jeff Sessions and Rick Perry. Every single one is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.
Donald Trump and the party are now completely melded. There’s no daylight between them. If he goes down, they all go down. That might be reason enough, if nothing else, for conservative elites to begin distancing themselves now. Pence and others could be anticipating a moment, post-election, when there’s a huge power vacuum to fill in.
If Pence is any indication, the breaking point may be Trump’s attempt to overthrow the democratic will of the American people at the J6 insurrection. That was among the former vice president’s reasons. Trump had wanted him to reject swing-state electoral votes and send them back to legislatures controlled by the GOP. Pence denied he had that power, so Trump sent in a phalanx of paramilitaries to pressure him into doing as ordered. “Hang Mike Pence,” they chanted. Mulvaney, Azar, DeVos and Chao all resigned in protest after the insurrection.
Conservative elites might hold their noses and support Trump if he chose to move on from the insurrection, but he won’t. He’s doubling down. His first rally after officially securing the Republican nomination was in Dayton, Ohio, last Saturday. According to the AP, Trump “stood onstage, his hand raised in salute to the brim of his red MAGA hat, as a recorded chorus of prisoners in jail for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack sang the national anthem. An announcer asked the crowd to please rise ‘for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6th hostages.’ And people did, and sang along. ‘They were unbelievable patriots,’ Trump said as the recording ended. Having previously vowed to pardon the rioters, he promised to help them ‘the first day we get into office.’”
The J6 insurrection is now a “cornerstone” of Trump’s campaign.
Violence, the threat of it and his failed coup d’etat are the context for properly understanding comments Trump made at that rally. Here’s ABC World News Tonight host Mary Bruce: “We begin tonight with the race for the White House and former President Donald Trump’s campaign now on the defensive after his fiery rhetoric at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday night. Trump warn[ed], while discussing the economy, that there would be a quote ‘bloodbath’ if he’s not reelected in November. This after the former president kicked off the event by paying tribute to those who attacked the US Capitol on January 6.”
Conservative elites might tolerate even that if they believed they could control Trump. But whatever hope there was in doing that almost certainly melted into the air after his takeover of the Republican Party’s official fundraising arm, the Republican National Committee. Lara Trump is in charge, virtually guaranteeing that donations will be sent to her father-in-law, not to struggling down-ballot Republicans.
Donald Trump and the party are now completely melded. There’s no daylight between them. If he goes down, they all go down. That might be reason enough, if nothing else, for conservative elites to begin distancing themselves now. Pence and others could be anticipating a moment, post-election, when there’s a huge power vacuum to fill in.
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(Paul Ryan, the former GOP speaker of the House, was probably the last elite conservative to exert full control over Trump when he convinced him, by stroking his narcissism, to sign off on a tax cut for the rich that ballooned the national debt by orders of magnitude. Now a private citizen, Ryan has come out strongly against Trump. Three US Senators — Indiana’s Todd Young, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins — have also said they won’t support him or endorse anyone. Ditto for Utah’s Mitt Romney, who is not running for reelection.)
In the absence of control by conservative elites, Trump’s weakness is increasingly on display. He has made anti-democratic violence a centerpiece of his White House bid. He has rejected solutions to issues he’s running on. (He blames Joe Biden for his “open border policy” but killed a bipartisan bill, via the House speaker, that would have built a border wall.) He was caught on a hot mic saying he wants to be America’s Kim Jong Un. He can’t afford a half-billion-dollar bond in the business fraud case brought against him by New York state. So he’s bringing back Paul Manafort, who was convicted after Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election. His presence on the campaign is an open invitation to foreign entities to bribe Trump.
For conservative elites, a clown like Trump was not a problem as long as the trains ran on time – as long as he did not threaten, or actually undermine, the existing political order that enables conservative elites to maintain their elite status. His weakness seemed to suggest they could control him. But, as with all fascist clowns, it turned out to be the very thing that stopped them. Some are sticking with him and hoping for the best. Others are bailing and instead turning to democracy.
It’s now the only thing that can save their elite status.
John Stoehr is the editor of the Editorial Board. He writes the daily edition. Find him @johnastoehr.
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