The GOP Authoritarian Nightmare Is a Twin Threat

Ever since Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015, critics worried about his authoritarian tendencies. He’s done much to justify those fears. At his rallies, he whipped crowds into such a frenzy that protesters were beaten. As president, he’s flouted elementary rules about nepotism and conflict of interest; undermined the independence of the judiciary by impugning judges overseeing cases involving him or his administration; obstructed justice by firing James Comey after he refused to pledge loyalty to him; and arbitrarily limited media access by, for instance, replacing daily White House press briefings with off-camera gaggles where recording is banned.

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 By Frum’s definition, Trump is indeed an aspiring autocrat. But he’s only one wing of the anti-democratic trend in American politics—in the Republican Party, to be specific. Equally dangerous, and intimately connected with Trump’s mode of authoritarianism, is the degradation of democratic norms in the Senate under Mitch McConnell. The majority leader and a dozen other senators—all of them male—wrote their Obamacare repeal bill in secret, concealed not only from the public and Democrats, but even their Republican colleagues. Now, having finally released his version of the American Health Care Act on Sunday, McConnell is trying to force the bill through the Senate as quickly as possible.

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Trump’s authoritarianism and McConnell’s are two very different strains. The president is a narcissist who gathers power for personal gain self-gratification. He cares little for the specifics of policy outcomes, and merely wants victories that he can boast about.

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This is the authoritarianism of pure spectacle. McConnell, by contrast, is withdrawn and diffident in his public. (He’s jokingly likened to a turtle because of his appearance, but behaves like one, too.) While the majority leader doesn’t crave attention, he does care deeply about a specific policy agenda: advancing the plutocratic preferences of the Republican party’s donor class. Infinitely more knowledgeable than Trump about how government functions, McConnell subverts norms with a laser-like focus on advancing that agenda. His authoritarianism, in other words, is one of procedure.

As different as they are, these two forms of authoritarianism depend on each other. It’s unlikely that the Republican Party would have won a unified government last fall without Trump’s theatrical flair. To judge not only by last year’s election, but also this week’s special congressional election in Georgia, Trump’s tribalist politics have far more appeal with the Republican base than a forthright agenda of tax cuts for the rich and entitlement cuts to the poor. And when it comes to that agenda, all that really matters is that the policies be sold through the lens of negative partisanship. After all, Trump campaigned on a promise not to cut Medicaid, whereas McConnell’s version of the AHCA would slash the program by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

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If the Republican Party needs Trump, the president is equally dependent on the GOP. Given his manifest disinterest in policy and the details of governance, he would be unable to pass anything without crafty leaders like McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. But there is a more sinister dimension to Trump’s alliance with these Republican leaders: Congress has the power to check the president, including impeachment and removal if necessary. Ryan and McConnell are the bulwarks protecting Trump from a wide range of areas where he should be held accountable. If they wanted to, they could push for laws requiring him to reveal his taxes, force him to place his assets in a blind trust, and use nepotism rules to limit the power of family members, among a range of other checks.

Republicans in the House and Senate have implicitly made a devil’s bargain with Trump, giving him a free hand to indulge his kleptocratic and autocratic tendencies in exchange for what they want: stalwart conservative judges for the Supreme Court, and a presidential signature on whatever bills Ryan and McConnell manage to pass. And make no mistake: He will sign any major legislation that crosses his desk.