Is the GOP Tiptoeing Toward Normality?
It’s too soon to breathe easy, but something is stirring.
EVERY MORNING, before we open our eyes, every one of us must grapple with the excruciating possibility that Donald Trump could be re-elected. It’s the nightmare from which we cannot awake, at least for now. And yet, while we go through our days under this sword of Damocles, we can also detect that something is stirring in the Republican party. After eight vertiginous years of rot and decay made no less alarming by their often buffoonish character, the GOP seems to be taking some tentative steps toward normality.
Consider Texas. The Lone Star State has contributed more than its share to the degradation of American politics through the good offices of Sen. Ted Cruz, a chief instigator of the January 6th insurrection through his election denialism; Gov. Greg Abbott, a conspiracy booster, immigrant exploiter, and gun extremist; and former state GOP chairman Allen West, a secessionist. It was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who filed the 2020 lawsuit asking that the votes of Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (where Biden won narrowly) but not those of North Carolina or Florida (where Trump won narrowly) be thrown out. It was an obviously specious, bad-faith abuse of the law, but that did not prevent 126 House Republicans, 17 state attorneys general, and the then-sitting president from endorsing it. Oh, and if the Supreme Court had taken the case, rather than dismissing it with a few brisk sentences, Ted Cruz was on deck to argue it.
And yet, Texas Republicans did something we’ve only fantasized about in recent years—they impeached Ken Paxton. Paxton’s list of alleged offenses is very long. Andrew Murr, a Republican state representative who led the committee investigating Paxton, said the committee found:
bribery, conspiracy, abuse of office, misappropriation of public resources, obstruction of justice and more. Paxton repeatedly and obsessively invented new rules and redirected public resources solely to help a friend and campaign donor, real estate developer Nate Paul, who was under FBI investigation. Paul had not only contributed $25,000 to Paxton’s campaign, but he was also helping remodel Paxton's Austin home and had quietly given a job to Paxton’s mistress.
Paxton’s abuse of office came to light when four attorneys in his office, all reportedly Republicans and conservatives, reported him. When he fired them, they filed a whistleblower suit and won a $3.3 million settlement. Paxton asked the legislature to pay the settlement out of taxpayer funds. And there’s much more.
That Paxton was so flagrantly corrupt doesn’t really explain what the legislature did. The Trumpified GOP has been willing to support a credibly accused child molester (Roy Moore), a fascist-adjacent congressman (Paul Gosar), a large assortment of the QAnon-curious, a number of good old-fashioned corrupt pols, the occasional Oath Keeper as chairman of a state GOP, and too many other clowns, creeps, and criminals to mention. And yet, in 2023, the Texas House of Representatives, by 121-23 (including 71 percent of Republicans in the chamber), voted to impeach Paxton and remove him from office pending a Senate trial in August.
Not only did the Republicans draw an ethical line and apply it to one of their own, they did it in the face of vigorous lobbying by Donald Trump. He blurted on Truth Social that, “The RINO Speaker of the House of Texas, Dade Phelan, who is barely a Republican at all and failed the test on voter integrity, wants to impeach one of the most hard working and effective Attorney Generals in the United States.” He added a threat:
Hopefully Republicans in the Texas House will agree that this is a very unfair process that should not be allowed to happen or proceed—I will fight you if it does. It is the Radical Left Democrats, RINOS, and Criminals that never stop. ELECTION INTERFERENCE! Free Ken Paxton, let them wait for the next election!
They defied him. That’s not nothing.
SO DID THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS in Washington, D.C. On May 11, at the CNN town hall, Trump advised Republicans to drive off the cliff on debt ceiling negotiations. “I say to the Republicans out there—congressmen, senators—if they [the Democrats] don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default.”
In light of the pyromaniac spirit in the Freedom Caucus and the perceived precariousness of Kevin McCarthy’s leadership, there was genuine fear that the party really would do it, if only to invite disaster during Biden’s presidency. Instead, the House leadership behaved more like a normal party, accepting a deal in which neither side got everything but everyone got some bragging rights. They spurned the call for chaos. It was almost as if they felt they had a stake not just in their party, but in the country.
And something else happened in the past two weeks that felt different. Trump engaged in his usual lickspittle sycophancy toward a gross despot, congratulating Kim Jong-un on his election to the executive board of the World Health Organization (international organizations are not known for their high ethical standards). And Republican politicians, rather than 1) claiming that they didn’t see the comments, 2) suggesting that this is a media-generated controversy, 3) saying they are focusing on real issues like inflation or the crisis at the border, or 4) offering that Trump really has a point when you think about it, did something else. They condemned him in clear terms. Nikki Haley responded that “Kim Jong Un is a thug and a tyrant, and he has tested ballistic missiles against our allies. He’s threatened us. There’s nothing to congratulate him about. I mean, he’s been terrible to his people. He’s been terrible to America and we need to stop being nice to countries that hate America.”
Mike Pence said, “Whether it’s my former running mate or anyone else, nobody should be praising the dictator in North Korea or praising the leader in Russia, who has launched an unprovoked war of aggression in Ukraine.” Notable formulation—“my former running mate.” Pence has come some way from the obsequiousness that characterized all but the final minutes of his vice presidency.
Ron DeSantis noted that Kim is a “murderous dictator.” Even Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who is not running for president, tweeted that “Taking our country back from Joe Biden does not start with congratulating North Korea’s murderous dictator.” There were others as well.
Not only do these comments reflect a reaffirmation of traditional American values, they framed their criticism of Trump in moral terms. They didn’t dodge the fitness question by saying he was a likely loser. As John Bolton put it, “No American president, past, present, or future, should ever utter the words ‘Congratulations to Kim Jong Un.’ It’s embarrassing for the United States and proves without question that Trump is unfit to lead. North Korea starves and tortures its people.”
Will it last? Who knows? Recent history mocks the optimist. But if not an earthquake, these developments are at least tremors that suggest something may be changing in the Republican party.