XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, rec.arts.tv, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: or.politics, alt.atheism   
   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
    The Republican response to Donald Trump’s latest criminal indictment   
   offers a clear test of the famous saying that the definition of insanity   
   is doing the same thing over again and hoping for a different result.   
      
   The choice by Republican leaders, and even almost all of his 2024 rivals   
   for the Republican presidential nomination, to unreservedly defend Trump   
   after he was indicted earlier this year by the Manhattan district attorney   
   helped the former president to widen his lead in primary polls. The roar   
   of outrage from Republican leaders to that indictment restored Trump’s   
   grip on the party after frustration over his role in the GOP’s   
   disappointing 2022 midterm elections had loosened it.   
      
   But since last week’s disclosure that Trump faces another criminal   
   indictment – this one federal, over his handling of highly classified   
   documents – the party leadership and 2024 field has almost entirely   
   replicated that deferential approach.   
      
      
   Analysis: Trump documents case is a test for the justice system he wants   
   to dismantle   
      
   Repeating the pattern from other moments of maximum threat to Trump, the   
   GOP response has been marked by a pronounced communications imbalance.   
   From House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham,   
   Trump’s supporters have loudly supported his claims that he is being   
   persecuted by the left.   
      
   Simultaneously, with only a few conspicuous exceptions like second-tier   
   presidential contenders Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the most   
   Trump’s critics in the party have been willing to do is remain silent and   
   not validate his vitriolic charges. Apart from those two former governors,   
   just a short list of prominent Republicans – including former Trump   
   administration senior officials William Barr and John Bolton, and Senate   
   Minority Whip John Thune – have pushed back at all against Trump’s claim   
   that he is being hunted by “lunatic,” “deranged” and “Marxist”   
   prosecutors, or publicly expressed misgivings about the underlying   
   behavior detailed in the federal indictment against him.   
      
      
   By refusing to confront Trump or his enraged defenders more directly, the   
   Republicans who want the party to move beyond him in 2024 may be stitching   
   their own straitjacket. The nearly indivisible GOP defense of Trump has   
   once again created a situation in which a controversy that is weakening   
   Trump with the broader electorate is strengthening his position inside the   
   GOP coalition.   
      
   Perhaps not surprisingly, multiple public polls show that most voters   
   outside the Republican base are worried Trump jeopardized national   
   security and dubious that anyone convicted of a serious crime should serve   
   again as president. In a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll this spring, roughly   
   three-fourths of independents, people of color, and voters under 45, as   
   well as four-fifths of college-educated Whites, said they did not want   
   Trump to be president again if he’s convicted of any crime. (The poll was   
   conducted after Trump’s indictment in Manhattan but before the recent   
   federal charges.)   
      
   In a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted partially after last week’s   
   indictment, a solid 57% majority of Americans – including around three-   
   fifths of college-educated Whites and voters under 30 and nearly that many   
   independents – said he should not serve as president if he’s convicted   
   specifically in the classified documents case. More than two-thirds of   
   Americans overall said his handling of classified documents had created a   
   national security risk.   
      
      
   Yet those same surveys also show that the vast majority of Republican   
   voters say they do not believe Trump’s behavior is disqualifying – even if   
   he’s convicted – and accept his claim that he’s the victim of unfair   
   treatment. (In the Marist survey, more than three-fifths of Republicans   
   said they would welcome a second Trump term even if he is found guilty of   
   a crime.) That, too, may be unsurprising given the paucity of conservative   
   elected officials or media figures that those voters trust telling them   
   otherwise.   
      
   Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian leaders, sees more   
   than tactical political maneuvering in the choice by so many Republicans   
   to again immediately lock arms around Trump despite the powerful evidence   
   detailed in last week’s indictment. Such deference is “completely   
   consistent” with the behavior across the world of “autocratic parties”   
   under the thrall of “a leader cult,” says Ben-Ghiat, author of the 2020   
   book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”   
      
   The closest recent parallel she sees to the GOP’s behavior might be how   
   the Forza Italia party remained in lockstep for years behind former Prime   
   Minister Silvio Berlusconi throughout multiple trials (and even   
   convictions) for corruption and sexual misconduct, amplifying his claims   
   that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy and “witch hunt.” For leaders   
   like Trump or Berlusconi (who died at 86 on Monday) such legal challenges,   
   she says, actually become a “juncture” to strengthen their dominance by   
   demanding that others publicly defend their behavior – no matter how   
   indefensible. In that way, the leader establishes personal loyalty to him   
   as the one true litmus test for belonging to the party. (The Republican   
   decision to replace a party platform in 2020 with a brief statement   
   declaring it would “enthusiastically support” Trump’s agenda, she notes,   
   marked an important milestone in that transition.)   
      
   “If you stay in the party it’s either you have to be supporting Trump or   
   face the consequences,” says Ben-Ghiat, who teaches at New York   
   University. “You could be even running against him, but you have to adhere   
   to the party line: the weaponization by the deep state. That’s the sad and   
   dangerous part among many dangers we face. Even those people are stuck   
   within this narrative world and this party line and their targets are the   
   same as Trump’s.”   
      
   Trump’s latest round of legal jeopardy leaves the Republicans who are   
   hesitant about him – either because they consider him unfit to serve as   
   president or simply because they believe he is too damaged to win a   
   general election – in the same position as his critics since 2015: hoping   
   that his supporters will somehow move away from him, but unwilling to do   
   almost anything overt to encourage them.   
      
   “They keep indulging the fantasy. … They don’t ever have to do anything   
   and a deus ex machina is going to do this by itself,” says long-time   
   conservative strategist Bill Kristol, who has emerged as one of Trump’s   
   most dogged GOP critics.   
      
      
   Some Republicans say it’s possible this time will be different and the   
   sheer weight of legal proceedings mounting against Trump – which could   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)