Republicans Using Passive Agressive Behavior Agains President Trump
Fear and Loyalty: How Donald Trump Took Over the Republican Party
The president demands consummate fealty, and as the impeachment hearings showed, he has largely attained information technology. To cross him is to risk losing a future in the Republican Party.
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BIRMINGHAM, Mich. — By the summer of 2017, Dave Trott, a two-term Republican congressman, was worried enough near President Trump's erratic behavior and his flailing attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Human activity that he criticized the president in a closed-door coming together with young man G.O.P. lawmakers.
The response was instantaneous — just had nothing to do with the substance of Mr. Trott's concerns. "Dave, you need to know somebody has already told the White House what you said," he recalled a colleague telling him. "Be ready for a barrage of tweets."
Mr. Trott got the message: To defy Mr. Trump is to invite the president's wrath, ostracism within the political party and a premature finish to a career in Republican politics. Mr. Trott decided not to seek re-election in his suburban Detroit district, concluding that running as a Trump skeptic was untenable, and joining a wave of Republican departures from Congress that has left those who remain more devoted to the president than always.
"If I was all the same there and speaking out against the president, what would happen to me?" Mr. Trott said before answering his own question: Mr. Trump would have lashed out and pressured House 1000.O.P. leaders to punish him.
Just under four years afterwards he began his takeover of a party to which he had trivial connexion, Mr. Trump enters 2020 burdened with the ignominy of being the commencement sitting president to seek re-election after existence impeached.
But he does so wearing a political coat of armor built on full loyalty from One thousand.O.P. activists and their representatives in Congress. If he does non relish the wide admiration Republicans afforded Ronald Reagan, he is more feared by his party'south lawmakers than any occupant of the Oval Office since at to the lowest degree Lyndon Johnson.
His fe grip was never firmer than over the last two months, during the House enquiry that concluded Wednesday with Mr. Trump'due south impeachment on charges of abuse of ability and obstructing Congress. No Firm Republican supported either article, or even authorized the investigation in September, and in hearing later on hearing into the president's dealings with Ukraine, they defended him as a victim of partisan fervor. Ane Republican even said that Jesus had received fairer treatment before his crucifixion than Mr. Trump did during his impeachment.
Perchance more than revealing, some Thou.O.P. lawmakers who initially said Mr. Trump's phone call with the president of Ukraine was inappropriate later on dropped their criticism. People shut to Mr. Trump attributed the shift both to his public defence force of the call as "perfect'' and to private discussions he and his allies had with concerned lawmakers.
This fealty hardly guarantees Mr. Trump re-election: He has never garnered a l percent approving rating as president and over one-half of voters tell pollsters they volition oppose him no matter who the Democrats nominate.
Simply the shoulder-to-shoulder unity stands in contrast to Democrats at the moment, with their contentious moderate-versus-liberal primary that was on total display in Thursday nighttime's debate. And it is all the more striking given Mr. Trump'south deviations from longstanding political party orthodoxy on problems like strange policy and tariffs.
"He has a complete connexion with the average Republican voter and that's given him political power here," said Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of N Carolina, adding: "Trump has touched the nervus of my conservative base like no person in my lifetime."
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Interviews with current and one-time Republican lawmakers as well as party strategists, many of whom requested anonymity so as not to publicly cantankerous the president, propose that many elected officials are finer faced with 2 choices. They can vote with their anxiety past retiring — and a remarkable forty percent of Republican members of Congress have washed so or have been defeated at the ballot box since Mr. Trump took office.
Or they can mute their criticism of him. All the incentives that shape political behavior — with voters, donors and the news media — compel Republicans to bow to Mr. Trump if they want to survive.
Sitting in a garland-bedecked hotel restaurant in his former district, Mr. Trott said that he did not want to seek re-election "as a Trumper" — and that he knew he had piffling future in the party as an opponent of the president.
There is no market, he said, for independence. Divergence from Trumpism will never exist good enough for Democrats; Mr. Trump will target y'all among Republicans, Mr. Trott added, and the vanishing voters from the political eye will never have a hazard to reward you because yous would not make it through a primary. That will be ensured in role by the megaphone the president wields with the conservative news media.
"Trump is emotionally, intellectually and psychologically unfit for office, and I'm sure a lot of Republicans feel the same way," Mr. Trott said. "But if they say that, the social media avalanche volition be overwhelming." He added that he would exist open up to the presidential candidacy of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York.
On the other manus, Mr. Trump dangles rewards to those who show loyalty — a favorable tweet, or a presidential visit to their state — and his heavy manus has assured victory for a number of Republican candidates in their primaries. That includes Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who did as many Fox News appearances as possible to depict the president's attention.
"The greatest fear any fellow member of Congress has these days is losing a primary," said onetime Representative Carlos Curbelo, Republican of Florida, who lost his general election final twelvemonth in a heavily Hispanic Miami-area district. "That'south the foremost motivator."
The larger challenge with Mr. Trump is that all politics is personal with him, and he advisedly tracks who on telly is praising him or denouncing his latest rhetorical excess. "He is the White House political director," Scott Reed, a longtime Republican consultant, said.
More than conventional presidents may be more understanding of lawmakers who are pulled in a different direction past the political demands of their districts — but Mr. Trump has shown little tolerance for such dissent. Mr. Curbelo, for instance, occasionally spoke out against Mr. Trump, particularly over immigration policy, and the president took observe.
Riding with Mr. Trump in his limousine on Central West terminal year, Mr. Curbelo recalled in an interview that the president had noted that people were lining the streets to show their back up for him, and asked Mr. Curbelo if they were in his commune.
He said they were, prompting the president to turn to others in the motorcar and say: "Mayhap Carlos will stop saying such nasty things about me," Mr. Curbelo recalled.
He said they all laughed but the "passive aggressive" comment, as he put it, was not lost on him.
Increasingly, though, Mr. Trump does non even have to make implied threats within his party — Republicans tin can define the benefit of sticking with him.
Representative Elise Stefanik hails from an upstate New York district that the president carried by fourteen points yet she had not previously hesitated to go her ain way.
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"I have one of the about independent records in the House," Ms. Stefanik said. "And I take critiqued the president, have voted differently than the president."
Yet after she vehemently criticized the impeachment hearings and found herself under attack by George Conway, the anti-Trump husband of the White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, she welcomed the comprehend of the president, his family and news media allies such as the Fox News host Sean Hannity — and the campaign donations that poured in.
Ms. Stefanik said she opposed impeachment because Democrats failed to make a convincing instance. Merely she said that she would not have even voted to censure the president, and that she was chiefly driven by wanting to "stand upward for my district."
And, Ms. Stefanik noted, since her "no" vote she had received "the most positive calls since I was sworn into role."
The incentive to show fealty to Mr. Trump has get axiomatic to the Social club for Growth, a fiscal bourgeois group that was made famous for its willingness to fund primaries against Republican leaders and was hostile to Mr. Trump in 2016.
The group'south president, David McIntosh, said conservative voters had lost interest in punishing ideological heresies and were motivated by one overarching factor unrelated to policy.
"Poll later poll showed united states of america that Republican main voters wanted their nominees to support President Trump," he said, "so in lodge to make sure they were viable and would become re-elected, they ended upwards being supporters of his."
Mr. McIntosh and Republican lawmakers said Mr. Trump's largely bourgeois record had fabricated it easier to remain loyal, noting his tax cuts, deregulation and judicial appointments.
Lawmakers not seeking re-election are often the about aboveboard near the slavish devotion Mr. Trump engenders with voters — and the pressure it puts on them.
"Public officials need to exist held answerable, and I don't think whatever governmental system works well with bullheaded loyalty without reason," said Representative Francis Rooney of Florida, who announced his intention to retire earlier this yr later criticizing Mr. Trump for his conduct with Ukraine and suffering an immediate backlash.
Mr. Rooney ultimately voted confronting impeachment, but told colleagues he felt uneasy nearly information technology. Recalling an advent on a Florida television station later, Mr. Rooney said: "They interviewed me later the vote and and then they interviewed i of these Cape Coral Republican ladies and she said, 'Well, information technology's near time they came around to realize it'south a big media hoax.' How do you argue with that? How practice you reason with that?"
Many of the Republicans who may take considered impeaching Mr. Trump are gone. They were part of a 40-seat loss the party had in the Business firm last yr, which deprived the conclave of many of its well-nigh independent figures and left it more supportive of the president than e'er.
So why was there no introspection within the party after the midterms well-nigh the damage Mr. Trump did to Republican candidates, especially in the suburbs?
"If you go to any Republican event, you're going to detect more people at that event than ever before," Mr. Trott said, "and every single ane of them to a person volition be all in for President Trump. They'll all accept 'Make America Groovy Once again' hats on and they'll exist saying what a tremendous president he is."
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Mr. Trott recounted 1 of his most vivid memories of his fourth dimension serving with Mr. Trump. It was the twenty-four hour period in 2017 when Business firm Republicans voted to repeal the A.C.A. and celebrated later at the White House.
Mr. Trott was i of the commencement lawmakers to enter the Oval Office after the Rose Garden celebration and he stood behind the president's desk when Mr. Trump pulled out a sheet of newspaper.
"He already had a list of 20 people who had voted against him two hours earlier," he recalled.
Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting from Washington, and Kitty Bennett contributed enquiry.
Republicans Using Passive Agressive Behavior Agains President Trump
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/us/politics/trump-impeachment-republicans.html
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