The tortured self-justification of one very powerful Trump-loathing anonymous Republican

[steve2470]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/anonymous-republican-donald-trump.html

“I remember thinking Reince Priebus is like Marshal Pétain, and the RNC is like Vichy France,” he said of the 2016 campaign. When Election Night finally came, he went to a party with other members of the conservative Establishment who agreed with the assessment. Nobody wanted Trump to win. (“Fuck, no,” he said, when I asked if he had voted for Trump, though he wouldn’t disclose whom he did vote for.) Everyone had made peace with the idea of four years of Clinton. When the results came in, “it was like a funeral,” he said. But for whom? Unlike when Trump won the nomination, this Republican didn’t consider quitting his job or leaving his party when Trump won the presidency. “What else am I gonna do,” he said, “go sell printer paper?” The alternatives were probably just as bleak during the primary, but back then, the power calculus wasn’t as clear. If Trump had lost the election, would those who had quit the party be praised for their foresight or shunned as deserters? Now, the power was there for the taking.

It’s definitely self-serving. I mean, once you grow up, life is all about contradictions.
Most days, in the crack of separation between his own aims and the aims of the president, the Republican can find a way to live with himself. Most days, feeling no connection to the White House, he can do his job and achieve a state of blissful denial, thinking little about whom his actions are really in service of. “Most days, he doesn’t factor into it,” he said, explaining the cognitive dissonance. “Trump’s pretty disengaged day to day. He has subcontracted most of what his administration actually does to actual Republicans who work on traditional Republican issues. That’s the story of his presidency. This is fundamentally a pretty lazy guy who likes to watch a lot of TV, likes to call up his buddies on the phone and bitch about why the government isn’t really working for him.”

But other days, during periods of crises or threat or — less common — unified effort, the interests of this White House and every Republican outside it fuse together. “It’s not sustainable in times like that,” he said, which “feels really bad” on a personal level. “There are times when we are all working directly, and those times felt bad.” Though, if he’s being honest, not entirely bad. “They can also be kind of fun,” he said, adding that standing against a common enemy — in those cases, Nancy Pelosi, congressional Democrats, and the entirety of the #Resistance — is the whole game for people like him. “I still enjoyed that,” he said, “That’s the bread and butter of what Republicans do.”

He knows that other anonymous Republicans walk among him. But “it’s been a long four years” since that Election Night funeral, he said, and every mourner had to make his or her own choice. “A certain segment went and got jobs in the administration. A certain segment wanted to keep suckling off the teat of the RNC and all that,” he said. He doesn’t talk much about Trump’s faults with those people anymore. “If you don’t like Trump, but you like money, and you’re willing to be vocal about how we need to reelect him, there’s a lot of money to be made this year.” Politics is a business, just like anything else, and the more sacrifices you’re willing to make, the better business is. Besides, he said, “it’s hard to go up against the president of your own party — even if he’s not really a Republican.”

very long article

eta: corrected subject line

[steve2470]

1. somehow I think some of the Nazis felt the same way about Hitler

This guy should have quit the Republican Party and gone to work for we Democrats or at least not contributed to this loathsome dictator-wannabe we have now.

[brush]

2. Yes, just get a job. It didn't have to be for us Democrats.