Is Donald Trump sabotaging the Republican Party? – opinion

On Oct 27, 2021

If you ever suffered under the delusion that Donald Trump cared one whit about the Republican Party, you haven’t been paying attention.

Remember, this is the genius who seemed surprised to learn two months into his presidency that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. As though he’d just made this startling discovery, he told a fundraising dinner for House Republicans, “Most people don’t even know [Lincoln] was a Republican. Right? Does anyone know? A lot of people don’t know that.”

He was probably the only one in the room who didn’t. Apparently he didn’t read that part of his briefing book that said the GOP has been known for over 150 years as “the party of Lincoln.”

No longer. It has become the party of Trump. More accurately, it should be called the cult of Trump. And it’s not about a new vision for America, not about inclusion or freedom for all. That was made abundantly clear when Senate Republicans unanimously voted last week against the voting rights bill that Democrats had watered down in hopes of attracting at least 10 Republican votes to permit debate.

But I guess that’s to be expected from a party that worships the vilest, racist president in a century, and is prepared to put him back in the White House despite his disgraceful exit, his role in fomenting an attempted coup, and his exhaustively documented history of lies. Even Mitch McConnell, the Senate GOP leader who is known to loathe Trump, said he’d vote for him without hesitation if he is the 2024 nominee.

Former US President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, US February 28, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/OCTAVIO JONES/FILE PHOTO)

There may be a silver lining in that cloud, not unlike the one that marked Millard Filmore’s political demise.

Filmore, the 13th president (1850-1853), couldn’t get the nomination of his Whig Party for a second term in 1852, so he ran in 1856 on the nativist Know Nothing Party’s ticket. His message was clear and eerily familiar: anti-immigrant, anti-elite, racial and religious discrimination, restrictions on citizenship and voting rights, and xenophobic. He finished third, carrying only one state.

Although neither a Republican nor a Democrat, he did a mitzvah for the Democrats: after that, immigrants began voting solidly Democratic.

Trump helped mobilize minority voters in 2020, and can do the same in 2024.

As with the Know Nothings, voter suppression is a dominant element of the Republican and Trump agendas. Trump may be carrying it to a new level. While his party was erecting barriers in Texas, Florida, Georgia and other Red states designed to keep Democratic voters from casting their ballots, Trump seems to be telling Republicans to stay home if his party fails to “solve the presidential election fraud of 2020.”

Perhaps sensing that people might be listening to Trump, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal accused him of threatening “electoral…