Remember When Republicans Called Themselves the Pro-Constitution Party?

They just don’t know how to quit Trump.

[Editor’s note: Watch Not My Party every week on Snapchat.]

Tim Miller: Really? Now he wants to terminate the Constitution.

Vito Spatafore (Joseph R. Gannascoli on The Sopranos): This f***ing guy.

Miller: This is “Not My Party,” brought to you by The Bulwark. All right, y’all, I don’t want to talk about this burnt-sienna buffoon doing a racist, bad Elvis routine any more than you do.

Gene Belcher (from Bob’s Burgers): Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Miller: In fact, I got a poll asking how you think we should cover Trump at the end of the ep. But it’s hard to ignore when a former president of the United States calls for a “termination of all rules regulations, and articles, even those found in our Constitution,” so he can be installed as an unelected dictator.

Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki on The Big Bang Theory): Subtle.

Miller: This is insane. For all the flaws of our other politicians, nobody in either party in my lifetime or my parents’ lifetime had proposed something as fundamentally un-American and radical as that.

Hank Schrader (Dean Norris on Breaking Bad): Has anything like this ever happened before?

Ben Savage (Cory Matthews on Girl Meets World): The Civil War!

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Miller: And it comes on the heels of his dinner with manic Nazi Kanye and America’s leading virgin incel white-nationalist livestreamer, Nick Fuentes.

Nick Fuentes: Elect Trump one more time and then stop having elections. . . . Taliban rule in America in a good way.

Ye (Kanye West): I see good things about Hitler also.

Miller: So when it comes to what to do about Trump now, you’d think this would be a layup for my former conservative pals. I mean, is it that hard to say “Having dinner with Nazis and proposing that we shred the Constitution is a dealbreaker?”

Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm in The Fellowship of the Ring): Well no . . . and yes.

Miller: That it’s time to terminate this guy’s bullshit, hasta la vista, baby? Apparently so.

King Arthur (Graham Chapman in Monty Python and the Holy Grail): You make me sad.

Miller: Let’s watch how one Republican congressman dealt with responding to Trump’s crazy earlier this week.

George Stephanopoulos: Can you support a candidate in 2024 who’s for suspending the Constitution?

Dave Joyce: I will support whoever the Republican nominee is.

Stephanopoulos: You can’t come out against someone who’s for suspending the Constitution?

Joyce: Well, you know, he says a lot of things that—but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen.

Mona (Michaela Watkins in The Back-up Plan): Yeah, but doesn’t mean that it won’t.

Miller: Meanwhile, as of this taping, Ron DeSantis, the great white hope for Republicans who want to replace Trump, has said nothing—nada—about any of this insanity. According to one Mitch McConnell adviser, it’s smart for him [DeSantis] and other Republicans to not “take the bait” on this issue. What bait?

Thurgood Stubbs (from The PJs): They’re not taking the bait.

RJ (from Over the Hedge): Almost had ’em.

Miller: Being pro-Constitution and anti-Nazi-dinner is too big of a political risk? Is that really where the Republican party is right now?

Skeeter (from South Park): Hey, if you don’t like America, then you can get out.

Miller: This is the exact type of thinking that caused Republicans widespread losses in the midterms. They didn’t stand up to Trump, nominated a bunch of election-denying freaks who got their ass kicked. Case in point, the faceplant from Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate runoff this week.

TV journalist (voiceover): Overnight Senate Democrats secured a 51-seat majority in the chamber after defending every single one of their seats that were up for grabs in the midterms and picking up one of them.

Miller: But apparently they still haven’t learned their lesson.

Ammon (Burgess Meredith in Clash of the Titans): When will they ever learn?

Miller: By playing footsy with the crazy, Republicans are leaving on the table a substantial bloc of normal mainstream voters who might be gettable for them if they didn’t go along with Trump’s anti-Constitution nonsense. Look, Republicans have always branded themselves as the pro-Constitution party.

Mitt Romney: When President Trump says he wants to suspend the Constitution, he goes from being MAGA to being RINO. We’re the Constitution Party.

Miller: Growing up, a lot of Republican nerds like me carried around our little pocket Constitutions, like a lot of GOP politicians still do. The likely incoming Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has said he even plans to have a performative reading of the document on the House floor next month. How does that square with refusing to condemn the man who wants to terminate it?

Alice Nelson (Ann B. Davis on The Brady Bunch): Can’t have ’em both, honey.

Miller: The best thing that McCarthy and the Republicans could do both for the country and for their own political viability in 2024 would be to begin that reading with a universal condemnation of Trump’s assault on the document that they claim to care so much about.

Conrad Dalton (Keith Carradine on Madam Secretary): You know that’s never going to happen

Miller: Otherwise, they’ll sink to new lows by continuing to chain themselves to their shipwrecked s***head.

Mr. Gierasch (Michael Higgins in School Ties): Sink or swim?

Miller: Now I want to hear from y’all. Trump isn’t going anywhere. But part of me wants to unshackle this show from covering him for a while. Would you guys, rather that I keep tomahawk-dunking on Trump every time he ups the ante with his bullsh** or put him on ice for a bit till the 2024 campaign really heats up? Let me know by swiping up and taking the poll and we’ll see you next week for more “Not My Party.”