Trump Puts Himself above the Republican Party Again

I’m just a simple country boy, but I must confess that I’m finding it hard to keep up with the rules of Making America Great Again. When Donald Trump was running in 2016 and 2020, it was supposedly incumbent upon all Republicans to vote for him given the alternative. “What about the Court?” skeptics were asked. “What about America?” “Do you not know what time it is?” Invariably, those contests were deemed “binary.” Sure, you might not like the candidate who came out of the primaries. But he was the candidate, whether you liked it or not, and, as a result, the only question that mattered was whether you wanted him or his opponent. Everything else was “self-indulgence.” The United States was on the line.

But now I see this, and it makes me wonder whether that was all self-serving guff:

I don’t know a huge amount about Joe O’Dea, because, like Donald Trump, I don’t live in Colorado. But I know enough about Joe O’Dea to know that I would vote for him. He hasn’t disqualified himself in any way, and he’s a Republican. For a whole bunch of reasons, I want the Republicans to run the Senate, and electing Joe O’Dea is one way to get there. I’m sure there are some things I’d disagree with O’Dea on, but, as I was told over and over again in 2016 and 2020, that’s not the correct inquiry to make. The correct inquiry to make is whether I’d prefer O’Dea to his opponent, which, having just looked them both up, I unquestionably would.

And yet here is Donald Trump himself telling me that the same “MAGA” people who set up these rules won’t “Vote” for figures such as Joe O’Dea, because . . . well, because despite the litany of important problems facing America, O’Dea has said he wants to “‘distance’ himself from President Trump, and other slightly nasty things.”

Is that the new rule? That it is incumbent upon all Republicans to vote for Republicans, unless those Republicans have “distanced” themselves from President Trump? Because, if it is, that doesn’t seem like much of a rule at all. For a start, there is pretty much nothing less relevant to me, my family, and my life than whether a given politician likes the Republican who lost the last election. Who cares? And, besides, if such a rule were to be implemented properly, it would have to disqualify Trump. The case for Trump was that the country was on the line, and that he, as a Republican candidate, was the means by which its destruction could be halted. Presumably, that same case applies to the Republicans running to take back Congress from the Democrats this November — Republicans from whom Donald Trump habitually “distances” himself, and about whom Donald Trump habitually “says slightly nasty things.” Why, one must ask, is this different?

There is only one potential answer to this question, and that is that Trump is the only politician that matters. Sure, such a view might hold, it would be nice for Republicans to win in November, but to win without that win being attributable or helpful to Trump would be to damage the broader project, which, couched though it might be in more general terms, is inextricable from the elevation and praise of Donald Trump. Or, to put it another way: The only potential answer to this question is built atop the logic of the cult.

Is the Republican Party a cult? I don’t think it is. I know it’s fashionable to insist otherwise, but I think that, when asked to choose between placating Donald Trump’s ego and addressing the very real set of problems that America faces — and that progressivism is making worse by the day — most Republican voters are going to choose to address the problems. If Trump wants to help do that, he’ll presumably remain important within the party. And if he doesn’t? Well, he won’t.