Why Remain a Republican?

Why Remain a Republican? The party’s “moderates” have become the most partisan of them all.

- Jonathan Chait

DAVID BROOKS, the New York Times op-ed page’s long- standing ambassador from the center-right, recently wrote a self- flagellatory column about the failure of anti-Trump Republicans to influence their own tribe. It was remarkable not for what it said but for what it didn’t. After lingering over the grim evidence—President Trump’s approval rating still hovers in the low 40s, and, more important, he commands the near unanimous support of the Republican base—Brooks concluded, “A lot of us never-Trumpers assumed momentum would be on our side as his scandals and incompetences mounted. It hasn’t turned out that way.”

What implications might be drawn from the implacable support of the party base for the manifestly incompetent, scandal-ridden party leader? One might entertain the conclusion that no combination of facts and logic can dislodge the Republican base from its tribal loyalties. This interpretation could be supported by such evidence as the fondness of Republicans for birtherism, their distrust of climate science, and so on. Perhaps the Republican base as currently constituted is hopelessly immune to reason and a reasonable person such as Brooks should instead refocus his political energies on curtailing its political power.

But Brooks’s column did not come to that conclusion. Indeed, amazingly enough, he did not even consider the option. Instead, he suggested that critics of Trump must try harder and somehow do a better job of persuading Republicans to stop loving Trump so much. The idea of abandoning the Republican Party because it is authoritarian and toxically anti-intellectual was apparently as unfathomable to him as a fish in a polluted river deciding to live on land.