Republicans Have No Moral Authority Here

The party that’s spent a decade abetting fascism doesn’t get to preach to the rest of us.

(Photo illustration by The Bulwark / Photos: Getty)

GRAHAM PLATNER’S VICTORY in last night’s Senate Democratic primary in Maine throws into tension my two most firmly held convictions: 1) that every Republican who fails to strenuously oppose Donald Trump and his illiberal actions deserves to lose to a Democrat who will; and 2) that in the process of ridding America of Trumpism, we should not become the thing we are rebelling against. Which means holding some standards of decency despite Republicans’ refusal to do so.

Platner officially became the Democratic nominee despite his myriad scandals, which are now well known to Mainers (and everybody else). In the leadup to yesterday’s primary, Democrats had a predictable reaction to that growing list of Platner indiscretions:

• First they panicked.

• Second, they started bickering about whether or not he should drop out.

The circular firing squad did its usual thing, and I confess to having contributed to it. That’s because the Democrats are still a mostly healthy, good-faith political party made up of people who care about things like objective truth, and who are uncomfortable at the prospect of supporting someone who evinces immoral or unethical behavior of the kind Platner has been accused of.

You know who doesn’t care one whit about any of that? Republicans. During the same time period, they’ve rallied around Ken Paxton—a cartoonishly corrupt scumbag and adulterous, election-denying MAGA fanatic—as their Senate nominee in Texas. There was no hand-wringing. There were no institutional Republicans grappling with their consciences. No one bothered themselves with the fact that Paxton attempted to disenfranchise millions of voters and overturn the 2020 presidential election. There was just the now-typical rush to get onside, no matter how despicable of a person Paxton happens to be.

Paxton was indicted on felony charges for securities fraud, was reported to the FBI by eight of his deputies for abusing his power to benefit a donor, is currently in proceedings for divorce from his wife on the grounds of adultery, and was impeached by the Texas House 121–23 (including 60 Republicans) for charges of bribery, abuse of office, obstruction, and bringing the office into “scandal and disrepute.” No matter. That’s the Republicans’ guy—and the right-wing press is lining up behind him.

Whereas many liberal and mainstream pundits are compelled to be intellectually consistent in their thinking, the conservative commentariat’s main incentive is to show religious devotion to the party line—and to win at all costs by doing so. In other words, there’s a “hack gap.”

It’s not only visible with respect to Paxton. This has been happening everywhere, over and over again, cycle after cycle, for a full decade now. Multiple elected Republicans, including the president, have said that the Los Angeles mayoral race was stolen from Spencer Pratt, and at this point we no longer even pretend to expect that anyone inside the GOP ranks will dissent.

These same blinders were up for Mark Robinson, the self-proclaimed “black NAZI” who ran for North Carolina governor in 2024, who repeatedly denied the Holocaust and publicly endorsed antisemitic claims.

Republicans also looked the other way when Herschel Walker ran for Senate in Georgia in 2022 despite his secret children and domestic violence allegations. Or paying for abortions he said he’d oppose if elected. Or paying himself out of his campaign coffers.

I could go on and on. Kari Lake, Marjorie “Jewish Space Lasers” Taylor Greene, Roy Moore, Mark Meadows, Matt Gaetz, Andy Ogles, George Santos.

Or how about the sitting president of the United States, who enjoys an 80 percent approval rating among Republicans?

Republican commentators stood by Trump after two dozen women came forward accusing Trump of various acts of sexual misconduct, including rape, after his insults again John McCain, the Access Hollywood tape, “very fine people,” the betrayal at Helsinki, the “perfect” phone call, the first impeachment, COVID, the January 6th insurrection, the second impeachment, the dinner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, the 34 felony counts, the sexual abuse adjudication, the January 6th pardons, DOGE, the Qatari jet, the January 6th slush fund. There’s not enough room on the internet to list all of his improprieties.

To the Republican commentators who now think they have standing to lecture the Democrats about the morality of their chosen Senate candidate: nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. A party that squandered its moral authority to support the most immoral president of our time as he undermines our entire governing system has no standing to give lectures about political ethics to everyone else.

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ONE EFFECT OF THE TRUMP ERA might be that the Republicans’ brand of moral agnosticism has trickled down to voters—Dems included. I do focus groups with these voters every week, and what I hear, increasingly, is a flat refusal to be lectured to by Republicans. It’s just a nonstarter.

I convened a group of Maine women who voted for Kamala Harris to check in how they were thinking about Platner. This group was conducted before the Times’s latest report on Platner’s behavior toward his exes. But their responses are still illuminating. Here’s what one of them had to say about Platner’s controversies:

I would practically vote for any warm body if he or she would beat Susan Collins, but I’ve heard the stuff about Graham Platner. I’m a feminist. I’ve been cheated on before. Like, I have all these things, so I’m like, “Oh yeah, trigger, trigger, trigger,” but he’s real about it. . . . And I don’t mean to be controversial, but whatever is in those Epstein files, I’m sure whatever Graham Platner did is not as bad as that. So bring it on.

Here’s another Mainer, Heidi, on Platner:

I’d rather have some guy that maybe like, cheated on his wife than pedophiles, you know, with Epstein files. I think it’s all a mess.

The Dems we spoke with see the other side’s gross moral failings—not to mention the existential threat the Republican party poses to democracy—as more pressing than Platner’s sexting, his tattoo, and his other personal shortcomings. This thinking even extends to conversations about sexual assault. When pressed on what the line would be for these women, Danielle, a Mainer who voted for Kamala Harris, said:

If [Platner was accused of sexual assault], we would hope that our justice system was taking care of that, and we wouldn’t be in this situation where they’re able to run. But, look at the rest of our government. Like, who knows?

I will confess to being extremely disturbed by much of Platner’s reported behavior. Partly that’s because I know if we make our peace with Platner, we’re opening the door for more of these types of deeply flawed candidates to run.

But what I’m hearing from these voters is, after ten years of excuse-making for Trump’s revolting behavior, they’re simply done allowing themselves to be shamed by the other side.

When you take Platner’s conduct and put it in Democratic voters’ faces, they do not care. Or they care in the abstract, but not when it comes to making a cold electoral calculation. They’ve made their peace with it. Platner may be lying about his personal conduct, but the entire GOP is lying about elections being stolen, and whether or not we should have a constitutional democracy. They stood by as the president set up a slush fund for January 6th rioters. They refuse to hold powerful people to account over the Epstein files, despite promising to do so.

The other side is worse, they’ve concluded. Collins is worse. Paxton is worse. God knows Trump is worse.

The reason I listen to voters is so that I can get an accurate picture of how real Americans think about these things. I am both depressed and alarmed at the degree to which Democratic voters have resigned themselves to this kind of Manichean worldview, especially given that we all watched Republicans do the exact same thing a decade ago—and look where it got us.

But I don’t blame them. Not for a second. They’re simply reacting to the events that have been unfolding before our eyes since Trump entered the political scene. They are looking at the entire GOP establishment—its candidates, its operatives, its funders, its voters, its pundits and posters and media enablers—and they are saying: You have no moral authority here.

And they’re right.