Republicans' unfathomable fear

Tom Campbell speaking at an event in Las Vegas, Nevada, by Gage Skidmore, CC BY SA 3.0

Last night, Donald Trump had his State of the Union speech. I won't be writing about that.

Today, he will be acquitted in the Senate along, probably, a straight-party vote. I'll be writing about that only tangentially.

Let me speak, instead, of Tom Campbell.

Those of you from California know him best as the Republican who lost to Dianne Feinstein in 2000 by twenty points.

What you don't know is that he's the only Republican for whom I've ever voted.

I voted straight Democratic the rest of the ballot. But for some reason, that year Feinstein decided she needed to tack right to win election. Campbell was more liberal than her on several issues. I didn't regret then, and don't regret now, voting for him.

And this is why I don't regret voting for him, now in 2020. He wrote this in 2016 in the San Jose Mercury News:

On Aug. 9, Trump said "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. ... Although the Second Amendment people -- maybe there is, I don't know." Trump's campaign explained this meant Second Amendment supporters would defeat Clinton at the ballot box. That, however, is not a logical interpretation of the remark. The context was what can be done if Clinton becomes president; not what can be done to stop her from becoming president. As such, this is a statement of great recklessness, made all the more so by our present environment of violence used to advance extremism.

Trump's words were similar to other calls he has made to ignore the rule of law. He has proposed ordering members of the U.S. military to violate American law regarding torture, assuring us that his orders, rather than the law, would be obeyed. He has encouraged physical violence by individuals against protesters at his rallies, assuring anyone doing so that he would cover their legal costs. He has threatened to use the antitrust laws against a company and an individual because the newspaper that individual owns has criticized him.

Now, he wasn't perfect. He also said he couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton because of the email server kerfuffle. "A pox on both your houses" wasn't helpful in 2016, much like it isn't now.

But one thing he wasn't was afraid of Trump. He cast off a lifetime of Republican Party membership to speak his conscience. He probably suffered personally and professionally. But if he feared doing so, he pushed past that fear.

You look at a man like Lamar Alexander, senator from Tennessee. He's retiring. He has no more political campaigns to run. He's criticized Trump before. And he will vote to acquit Trump today, just like the rest of the quivering GOP caucus.

Now, much of the caucus has fully imbibed at the Trump fountain. They're all in for Trumpian authoritarianism. But you have people like Alexander, and Lisa Murkowski, whom pundits assure us know better, and who admit that the House managers proved their case, but are still going to acquit. What is driving them?

Fear? Certainly. But why? Why are they afraid of a buffoon like Donald Trump, whose idea of courage is sending out a tweet? He's a farce, held together by hair spray and spray tan.

Fear of his rabble? Perhaps. Just today we have word of a drunken Fox watcher arrested for making a threat on the life of Adam Schiff. And I'm not minimizing the threat that rabble poses. But these aren't Sturmabteilung. They cosplay at open carrying in Virginia, but aren't roaming the streets of cities battling Antifa, or turning towns into cauldrons of chaos. Their main power is in their ability to scupper your political career. And if you care more about your political career than the good of the nation to which you took an oath to defend, then you are the grossest of cowards, unfit to hold any office of power or prestige.

In Y2K, I found it possible to vote for a Republican. Granted, it was the first and only time, but I'm also from New York City, which reveres the memory of that liberal Republican, Jacob Javitz. Although it wasn't likely, it wasn't impossible for me to vote for a Republican. I can't even comprehend doing so now. The GOP is a party of nihilists and cowards. The nihilists want to turn us into a fascist Christian theocracy. The cowards are too cowardly to stop them.

I commend someone like Joe Biden saying he wants to reach across the aisle and work with the GOP. I don't consider him naive. I consider him canny. His audience isn't the Trump voter. His audience is that great squishy middle which has it ingrained in their political DNA that the parties should work together. And it's going to take someone like Biden, if he wins, to gradually disabuse that squishy middle of their outdated notions. There are no Tom Campbells. There are no Jacob Javitzes. The rational Republican no longer exists. They died out when they fell cravenly into line after November 2016. If you want center-right and center-left to work together, while excluding both extremes, then you need a new center-right party. That isn't the GOP. And that isn't something that we Democrats can do for Republicans suddenly without a home. Much like it's not on black people to solve white racism, it's not on Democrats to solve the disease of the right. We can take preventive action to quarantine them from causing more damage to the Republic. But if conservatives don't wish to be represented by a fascist organ, they'll have to do the work themselves.