When Donald Trump won in 2016, he stood further from his party’s platform and stated principles than any president in a generation. Ironically, that’s why he commands more personal loyalty from the lawmakers of his party than any president in a generation.
Republican senators and congressmen are more afraid of crossing President Trump than they were of crossing George W. Bush — and more afraid than Democrats were of crossing Barack Obama. That helps explain why almost no Republicans are willing to go against Trump, even on procedural matters, during the impeachment debate.
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Back in the George W. Bush years, for instance, six Republicans voted against the Iraq War without incurring primary challenges for the offense. Most of the Republicans who did get primary challenges funded by outside groups — think of Marge Roukema in 2002 or Wayne Gilchrist in 2008 — earned those challenges for ideological offenses, not for disloyalty to Bush.
But these days, Republicans’ loyalty to the president is almost absolute.
So why would congressmen and senators be more loyal to a president who is the furthest from the conservatism that the GOP has long preached, whose economic philosophy furthest from the interests of the donor class, who has ushered in the worst first-term midterm backlash of a Republican in at least a generation, and who does not have great approval ratings?
We’ve seen Trump’s harshest critics, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul, become his fiercest defenders. We’ve seen Jeff Flake and Mark Sanford get devoured for the sin of criticizing and disagreeing Trump in perfectly reasonable ways. We’ve seen Mitt Romney become the least favorite Republican senator in conservative crowds — not for taking liberal stances, but for criticizing Trump.
So, the Republicans’ fear of Trump is rational. And the explanation lies in the difference between how Trump came into politics and how the average Republican senator or congressman did.
Trump and his base terrify GOP lawmakers because they don’t understand the phenomenon. Republicans used to think of their party in simple terms: There was a party establishment that was close to an economically conservative donor class and a more socially conservative activist movement; there was a base vote that was conservative and a swing vote that was more moderate. Balance those properly, and you win.
But Trump broke all these rules and won the primary going away. Then, he did what neither McCain nor Romney could do — he won the general election. He did this all while waffling on social issues and tax rates for the wealthy. He did it while being exposed as a morally depraved person. He did it while showing no understanding of policy or personal piety.
Republicans in 2016 learned that their party’s base was something very different than what they had assumed. It was less fiscally conservative, less socially conservative, and more populist than they had believed.
And the centerpiece of the Trump party was simply Trump.
Trump commands more loyalty than Bush ever did. In the Bush years, the party and the conservative movement stood for a lot of things, including principles and policies. Nowadays, the party and much of the conservative movement stand for one thing: Trump.
Trump’s personality and style matter here too. He is so thin-skinned that he tolerates no criticism. He punches back hard, and he punches back in ways that are totally irrelevant to the criticisms leveled against him. His punches are aimed not at the criticisms, but at his critics’ greatest vulnerabilities.
Throw into the mix that Trump is actually effective at bringing about the wins that Republicans value most (judges, tax cuts, deregulation, and pro-life policy), and you can see why Republican senators would recalibrate their compasses to point in one direction: Trump.
