As President Donald Trump and his administration head toward the midterm elections, it’s now clear that the Republican Party has split into three factions: the 'Never Trump' Republicans, who refuse to ever vote for this unethical man; the 'America First' Republicans, who favour Trump’s policies but won’t countenance his destroying American norms and laws; and 'Trump First' Republicans — those who think Trump’s dictates come first and the Constitution and traditional norms come second.
The most alarming thing happening in America today is that the Trump First Republicans, on Trump’s orders, are purging the few America First Republicans.
So, should the GOP hold the House and the Senate in the midterms, there will be no brakes whatsoever on this party and this president. I would not at all rule out their pushing for a third Trump term. We are going to a very bad place.
Just look at the trend line: The Never Trump Republicans, who included traditional conservatives such as Liz Cheney, John McCain and Mitt Romney, did not believe in Trump the man or many of his ideas. They thought that he both dishonoured the Constitution and true conservative principles. Alas, though, McCain died, Cheney was forced out of the party and Romney quit politics altogether.
The America First Republicans were ready to sign on to many Trump ideas — lowering taxes or limiting immigration or deflating the woke left — but when it came down to a choice between advancing those ideas and undermining democracy, this faction drew a red line. They put America first, not Trump first.
I am talking about people like former Vice-President Mike Pence, Sen Bill Cassidy, R-La, and the Indiana and South Carolina state legislators who refused to go along with Trump’s shameful out-of-cycle gerrymandering of electoral districts just to increase the GOP’s odds of holding the House. But now they, too, are being driven from the party.
Cassidy, the two-term Republican who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, was just defeated by a Trump First Republican in his primary.
The back and forth between Cassidy and Trump was revealing. While he did not mention Trump by name in his concession speech, there was no doubt about whom Cassidy was talking about.
“Let me just set the record straight,” Cassidy said. “Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution. And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”
Trump’s response was more direct — and incredibly revealing. He wrote on social media of Cassidy, “His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is Over!”
Read those words carefully: “His disloyalty to the man” — not to the Constitution — is what got him defeated. Trump first.
Sen Lindsey Graham, who seems willing to abandon any principle he ever held to stay on Trump’s good side and remain his golfing buddy, expressed the essence of the Trump First Republicans after Cassidy lost:
“You can disagree with President Trump,” Graham said, “but if you try to destroy him, you’re going to lose, because this is the party of Donald Trump.”
Read those words carefully, too: It is not the party of Republicans, it is “the party of Donald Trump," which means it is whatever Trump says it is. But the most revealing part of Graham’s quote was: “If you try to destroy him, you’re going to lose.”
For Graham, upholding the Constitution apparently equals trying to “destroy” a man, even when that man was attempting to destroy the most sacred principle of our Constitution: the peaceful transfer of power by elections.
At least Cassidy is not alone in the America First GOP wing. My colleague David French wrote eloquently about the Republican majority leader of the South Carolina Senate, Shane Massey, who last week gave a speech explaining why he would not go along with Trump’s personal request that he support a midterm gerrymander to eliminate the state’s only Democratic-held congressional district.
Like a true America First Republican, Massey described himself as a “rabid partisan” and Washington Democrats as “crazy,” but he drew the line at cheating. Massey said he rued the day when “maybe we become convinced that the only way to preserve the Republic is to implement policies that are contrary to the founding ideas of the Republic.”
A similar sentiment was expressed by the America First Republican state legislators in Indiana who refused to obey Trump’s demand to wipe out Democratic-leaning districts. In the recent Republican primary there, five of those legislators lost to candidates who openly ran on their willingness to put Trump first. — The New York Times
Thomas L Friedman
The author is reporter, and NYT columnist
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