In the months since President Trump lost re-election, a number of Republican leaders have moved to detach themselves from Trump and Trumpism. More may follow in the coming months. But that does not mean they should be praised. Lawmakers have only started to distance themselves from Trump’s sect of the party as his danger—or at least the danger it poses to their re-election chances—becomes more apparent.
Some ostensibly jumped ship after Trump incited a violent riot at the Capitol Building and halted votes to certify the results of the presidential election. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has privately shown support for Democratic impeachment efforts, believing that impeachment will make it easier to purge Trump from the GOP. On January 6, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a Trump supporter since 2015, said: “The president bears responsibility for today’s events by promoting the unfounded conspiracy theories that have led to this point.”
Twelve Republican senators are open to impeaching the former president, and one more has yet to comment. Assuming all Democratic senators vote to convict, they need seventeen Republican votes to impeach Trump. Although this no longer seems possible, the fact that any of them support it is a major departure from the last four years, particularly from last year’s failed impeachment.
Republican leaders and media initially balked at Trump before throwing all of their weight behind him after he won the 2016 presidential nomination. He rejected conservative values, insulted candidates’ wives, and shunned “the establishment.” But he got them votes and ratings, and ushered in an exciting new era of conservatism. His populist appeal and rejection of political norms seemingly revived the party. In moving on from the Bushes, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, the GOP appealed to a new crowd that was done with authority and political correctness—they wanted change.
And that’s what they got.
The Republican Party was more than willing to bend over backwards to protect the president and maintain the favor of its increasingly extreme base. During Trump’s first impeachment trial, not a single Republican in the House voted to charge him on either of the two counts. When he made racist comments, they remained silent; party leaders said nothing even as he followed through on campaign promises they’d openly opposed.
At least one of them—likely seeing what was coming—began to separate himself from Trump early on. In 2019, it was revealed that Senator Mitt Romney had an anonymous Twitter account which he used to criticize the president without political repercussions. During the February 2020 impeachment trial, Romney became the first senator ever to vote to convict a member of his own party.
Romney had criticized Trump during the 2016 election, too. However—like many of his other self-serving colleagues—he quieted significantly and met with the president on numerous occasions while he was being considered for a cabinet position. He even began praising Trump as he was considered for the role of secretary of state.
While Romney continued to criticize Trump in the last year, others stayed quiet. But regardless of Republican lawmakers’ silence, the weight of Trump’s incompetence and lies hurt him with suburban voters. Perhaps knowing this was the case, the Trump campaign claimed even before Election Day that if he lost, it would be due to fraud. On election night, Trump made a premature victory speech—three days later, Biden was announced the winner. Trump continued to spout baseless claims of a stolen election as he lost every lawsuit and recount in the following months.
In early January, in a last-minute, desperate attempt to change some results, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger claiming he had won the state, that Biden won only because dead people voted, ballots were burned, signatures were forged, unregistered voters voted, registered voters were turned away, out-of-staters voted, drop boxes were stolen—the list of conspiracies goes on. Raffensperger, a Republican, shut all of them down.
Despite this, in his rallies and tweets leading up to the Georgia Senate run-offs, Trump continued to claim that the entire system was corrupt. Results from the general election showed that plenty of moderate voters in Georgia had already rejected Trump, with a significant number of precincts splitting their ballots between Biden and incumbent Republican senator David Perdue.
But it seems that by draining his supporters’ faith in the integrity of the run-off elections, Trump may have dissuaded many of them from voting. Turnout was down most in Trump country, and picking fights with the Republican leadership in Georgia certainly didn’t help him win over moderate voters. In a state where Republicans had held both Senate seats for twenty years, the losses may be a turning point.
And then came January 6. The president’s rhetoric incited a violent attack on the US Capitol as his supporters halted the congressional certification of the presidential election results. His role in the insurrection against the government led him to become the only president in history to be impeached twice.
In the House vote, ten Republicans parted from the party and voted to impeach. Some corporate donors pulled funding from Republicans who entertained Trump’s attempts to overturn Biden’s victory—even more incentive for the GOP to start distancing itself from the last four years.
Trump’s lying and his ego are no longer beneficial to the Republican Party. In fact, the longer they allowed him to spout his nonsense and dangerous rhetoric, the more they harmed themselves politically. Now that it’s clear he did more harm than good, Republicans are hopping off the Trump train.
Or are they? On January 26, forty-five Republican senators, including McConnell, voted in support of a motion calling the impeachment unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. They’ve started to change their tune yet again, perhaps seeing the backlash Representative Liz Cheney is facing after voting to impeach Trump.
We watched Republicans denounce Trump’s actions and call him and his supporters dangerous, but as we watch them back off, it’s important to remember: it’s just politics. The party used fanaticism to its advantage for four years. It’s just that now, it’s increasingly advantageous for them to backtrack. They likely would not be turning on Trump if he had managed to overturn the election results and win Georgia.
We should not pat them on the back for doing the decent thing four years too late.
