Power at any cost

It's Trump Capitulation Disorder.

The FBI is raiding John Bolton’s house this morning. Bolton served as Trump’s National Security Advisor during his first term and as Ambassador to the UN under George W. Bush. Since the end of Trump’s term, Bolton has been a steady and harsh critic of Trump, calling him unfit to be president.

Alarm bells should be ringing, but, if they are, Republicans won’t hear them or won’t heed them. The people who once decried government agents as “jack-booted thugs,” now shrug when federal troops are deployed to US cities or the president uses the FBI to go after his political enemies, of whom John Bolton is one.

Republicans call Democrats’ fear of Trump’s authoritarian actions and impulses “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” In reality, their acceptance of behavior they once derided is Trump Capitulation Disorder. They’ve traded their political principles for raw political power. The question is whether they ever really held political principles or whether they just had policy positions.

The Republicans who believe in low taxes and less regulation once claimed they were about “freedom,” but Trump has shown that they’re really just about putting more money in the pockets of rich people and big business. The moralists who support Trump because he appointed anti-abortion judges ignore his sexual improprieties and ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The people who insist that their opposition to illegal immigration is about adherence to rules and laws never demanded accountability for those who attacked our government and attempted to steal the 2020 election. On the contrary, they’ve either made weak excuses or still insist that the election was stolen despite all evidence to the contrary.

What Trump has really exposed is a party that lost the courage of its convictions. The people who led the Reagan Revolution have either left the party or exposed themselves as charlatans. The party that built itself on the mantra of free markets, individual liberty, and personal responsibility is gone. The GOP now promotes tariffs, supports soldiers on the streets, and rejects any accountability for the president and his allies.

The GOP was once dominated by foreign policy hawks who believed in hard power and tough negotiations to keep dictators in check. Today, Trump is getting played by Vladimir Putin. He believes that he can cut a deal if the Russian dictator likes him and confuses insincere flattery with respect. Nobody in Europe—not Putin, not our allies—respects Trump. Our allies may fear that he’ll do something stupid because he feels insulted. They understand that our military is the most powerful in the world, but they aren’t looking to Trump for leadership. They are just trying to keep him from outright surrendering to Russia and undermining a fledgling democracy trying to break free of Russian influence.

The only hard power he’s used is against an Iran already severely weakened by Israeli military actions against its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. The Israel-can-do-no-wrong crowd will now give leeway to Trump’s authoritarian impulses. I guess they’re also willing to trade European stability for a further degraded Iran.

Republicans who should know better have overlooked Trump’s most egregious authoritarian and anti-democratic instincts for narrow policy wins. They are no longer the conservative party, but I’m not sure they ever were—or at least haven’t been for years. They’re a party driven by reactionaries. They will sacrifice personal freedom, the rule of law, democracy, and justice for power.

The anti-tax and regulation crowd will tolerate racism and police state tactics to enrich themselves and their friends. The so-called Christian right will support taking from the poor and giving to rich to make abortion illegal. The “Don’t Tread on Me” folks seem fine with the government trampling on people they don’t like.

They’ll all support voter suppression, extreme gerrymandering and undermining democracy for wins at the ballot box. Power at any cost is the overarching principle that holds their coalition together.