Is the GOP Addicted to Losing?

Plus: Overlearning the lessons of history

People gather at the park across from the criminal courts building where former President Trump turned himself in for arrest on April 4, 2023, in New York City, New York. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

The key to survival of any species is its ability to adapt.

That’s as true of politics as it is of biology. Political parties must learn when to fight or flee, or risk being mauled by some rough beast, whose hour has come round at last.

So students of history will fascinated by the torpor of the GOP circa 2023. Republicans were, after all, warned. Again and again. On Trump and abortion, but also on guns, moral Grundyism, and their addiction to the crazy.

Yet despite all the red blinking lights— and they are flashing everywhere — the GOP simply smacks its lips and says, ‘This is fine.” More, please.

The latest flare comes from my home state, Wisconsin. As Bill Lueders writes in today’s Bulwark, the race for Supreme Court here was the most expensive judicial race in American history. But, ultimately, the election was decided not by money, but by issues, especially abortion. And it was a landslide in a crucial swing state.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board is reaching for the panic button.

Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are or they will face another disappointment in 2024. A total ban is a loser in swing states. Republicans who insist on that position could soon find that electoral defeats will lead to even more liberal state abortion laws than under Roe. That’s where Michigan is now after last year’s rout.

But there are few signs that Republicans will pivot. As the Journal notes, Wisconsin’s 1849 law bans abortion in nearly all cases. Republicans who control the legislature actually contributed to Janet Protasiewicz’s victory by failing to amend the law, even though they “had ample warning from results last year in Michigan and Kentucky, where abortion drove Democratic turnout.”

I especially appreciated the shout-out to my hometown of Mequon here:

The Wisconsin results show abortion is still politically potent. In a special election for the state Senate on Tuesday, the Republican candidate barely won in a longtime GOP stronghold in the northern Milwaukee suburbs. If Republicans can’t win in Mequon, their legislative majorities will soon be imperiled, and you can move Wisconsin out of the swing-state column for the Presidency in 2024.

And then, of course, there is Donald Trump…

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Nothing Some things matter

Failure to learn the lessons of history, George Santayana reminded us tediously, dooms us to repeat it.

And don’t we know it. We carry the scars.

It’s understandable that some veteran Never Trumpers look at the coming cascade of indictments against the former president, and despair. It will just make him stronger. The base will rally to him. It makes his return to power even more likely.

This is a completely reasonable position, and it may be right. It’s rational to assume that anything that has happened before (especially if it has happened with depressing and predictable regularity) will continue to happen.

One of the lessons we have learned over the last decade is that when it comes to Donald Trump, nothing matters. Predicting that the GOP will bend the knee again is, in fact, the safest bet in American politics.

However…

It is also possible to over-learn the lessons of the past. This is what is known as “fighting the last war,” assuming that the next conflict will be a reiteration of the last one.

But the key to adaptability (and therefore survival) is recognizing change—to see what’s new, rather than simply assuming it’s always the same-old same-old.

Over the next few months, Trump may face criminal indictments in Georgia, and from the Department of Justice. There may be more perp walks, more arraignments, more not guilty pleas. Judges will issue more warnings. Trump will ignore them. America will be subjected to yet another year of his rants, insults, and threats. But from now on, the former president is also an accused felon, under the jurisdiction of the courts.

That’s new.

Maybe this will help him. Maybe we should abandon all hope.

Or maybe we shouldn’t overthink it.

BONUS: What might Trump’s future look like? Make sure you read Dennis Aftergut’s masterful imaginings in today’s Bulwark: “Trump’s Moment of Accountability.”

One way to evaluate the strength of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s evidence against Donald Trump is to envision how a prosecutor would present the case in his opening statement to a jury. Judge for yourself from this hypothetical opening, drawn from the indictment, the accompanying statement of facts, and Bragg’s Tuesday press conference.

Enjoy.

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Ben Wittes: The Trump Indictment Is Not Trivial

On yesterday’s Bulwark Podcast, I discussed the Trump indictments with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Ben Wittes.

You can listen to the whole conversation here.

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Defund the police?

Hold my beer, says the GOP.

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump is egging on Republicans in Congress to “defund” federal law enforcement ahead of a government funding deadline this fall...

This is too much even for Trump’s fluffer-in-chief.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said that contrary to Trump, he’s “not for defund the police.”

“I think it’s a bad idea,” he said Wednesday. “As frustrated as he has right to be about some things the FBI has done, terrorism lurks out there and taking your guard down from one moment could be very dangerous for the public.”

But Trump is hardly alone here.

At an event last summer, for example, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, the former chair of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, talked up possible priorities if the GOP took control of the House. “There are things you can do,” the Arizonan said, reflecting on Congress’ power. “You start defunding some of these bad agencies. The FBI. The DOJ.”

After the search at Donald Trump’s glorified country club, similar talk became much louder. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, for example, became a leading proponent of “defunding” the FBI. Last month, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida told a far-right audience, “We either get this government back on our side or we defund and get rid of, abolish the FBI, the CDC, ATF, DOJ, every last one of them if they do not come to heel.”

Yesterday, as Rolling Stone noted, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee dipped his toes into the same waters:

Republicans love to claim they are the “party of law and order,” and many in the GOP made a big stink when progressives called to defund the police following multiple police shootings of unarmed Black Americans. But some Republicans’ loyalty to cops only lasts until law enforcement does something they don’t like — such as investigating Donald Trump. Then they’re all for defunding the police. Take, for example, Rep. Jim Jordan, who on Sunday endorsed defunding the FBI and Department of Justice.

Exit take: Who thinks this is a winning issue in 2024?

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Quick Hits

1. Depraved, Deranged, and Doing Real Damage

Peter Wehner writes in the Atlantic:

I recently wrote that Trump was behaving like a mob boss. That comparison turns out to have been insulting to mob bosses everywhere.

Andrew Weissmann, a former lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s office, was asked on MSNBC about Trump’s attack on Judge Merchan and his family. Noting that he had prosecuted Mafia cases in the past, Weissmann said, “You do not have this behavior from a mob boss. There is a rule in organized crime. You do not do this with respect to prosecutors. You don’t do this with respect to the judge. You certainly don’t go after their families. It’s bad business to do that.”

Leave it to Donald Trump to go where Mafia dons will not.

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2. Meet the Guy Sent to Prison for Supposedly Trying to Get Trump’s Tax Returns

Tim Miller in today’s Bulwark:

JORDAN HAMLETT KNOWS how it feels to get railroaded. To be targeted by a politicized indictment. To sit in a courtroom agonizing over how this could possibly be his life, when he was only trying to fix a problem.

In other words: everything Donald Trump has claimed he’s experienced, only for real.

But like so many others who have suffered miscarriages of justice, Hamlett didn’t have the tools that the former president has used to push back against the system. When Johnny Law came for Jordan Hamlett, the boys in blue didn’t let him surrender on his own by way of a private jet. Or make exceptions to help him avoid a humiliating detainment. They didn’t spare him the mug shot or the ankle bracelet. Or keep his house nice and tidy during their raid.

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3. All Trump’s Insults

Via Puck News:

After returning to Mar-a-Lago – fundraising all the way – Trump spent 30 minutes Tuesday night trashing the myriad investigations he faces. Trump again attacked Judge Juan Merchan, despite Merchan’s request that everyone tied to the criminal case refrain from any comments that undermine the rule of law.

Trump called Merchan “a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris.” Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg “should be prosecuted, or at a minimum, he should resign” for “illegally leaking vast amounts of grand jury information.”

“This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election, and it should be dropped immediately,” Trump said of Tuesday’s indictment. “There is no case. No case!”

Special counsel Jack Smith – who Trump quipped may have changed his name – is a “radical left lunatic known as a bomb thrower who is harassing hundreds of my people day after day over the boxes hoax.” Smith is overseeing both the federal classified documents and Jan. 6 probes.

Fulton County DA Fani Willis is a “local racist district attorney in Atlanta who is doing everything in her power to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call.” Trump was talking about his infamous post-2020 election phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is suing the Trumps and the Trump Organization, is “another racist in reverse.”

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