Let’s not lose sight of the real reason Republican congressmen have continued to embrace Trump even after he lost the 2020 election. It’s the crazies.
In the 2016 election, and again in 2020, more people turned out to vote for Trump than had ever turned out for the Republicans before. Trump’s particular brand of insanity brought the extreme right-wing crackpots out to the polls in record numbers. The militiamen, the Birchers, the radical evangelicals, the white supremacists, the KKK, the closet racists, the backwoods off-grid paranoids; distant-right fringers of every stripe, many of whom had never voted before, came out to cast a vote for Trump.
Not since George Wallace had anyone given such clear and unequivocal voice to their xenophobia and their deep-seated fear of black and brown people. Trump promised them he was going to ban Muslims and build a wall to keep out the Mexicans, and they were all in.
The Republicans have found themselves increasingly out of step with mainstream America in recent years. Currently, only 25% of Americans are Republican. With a dwindling constituency, they are desperate for anything that might increase their numbers. Trump brings them those numbers. Embracing Trump means embracing his ugly, reprehensible followers and endorsing the brutal, hate-driven policies that please them. Trump appeals to the worst aspects of human nature, but Republicans are fine with that. It’s a measure of just how low the Republican party is willing to go to maintain their grasp on political power.
Republican congressmen had to toe a particularly distasteful line during Trump’s presidency, affording us entertainingly embarrassing displays of sycophantic groveling and boot-licking. We all thought the show was over when Trump lost the 2020 election, but lo and behold, the kissing of the great orange ass continued.
There are undoubtedly some Republicans in congress who actually believe in Trump and his agenda of hatred and intolerance. There are some who pretend to follow Trump, hoping to use the votes of his deplorables to launch their own bids for office. But the majority of rank-and-file republican congressmen are abasing themselves to Trump and pretending to believe in him simply to keep his large and despicable voting bloc on their side.
Even though Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden, Republican politicians are still trying to hang onto that massive voting bloc, trying to keep them energized and frightened enough to keep voting, because without them, their party is all but dead.
Trump’s insanity keeps putting Republicans in ever more awkward and difficult positions. They often have to walk a fine line between acknowledging reality and publicly endorsing Trump’s all-too-obvious delusions. In interviews they have to dance around questions and spin elaborate evasions so they can keep both their reality-based voters and Trump-based voters happy.
It’s like the Republicans are all doing a high-wire act, and both ends of the wire are on fire. It’s anybody’s guess how long they can sustain it, but they all know it’s not going to be for long. That’s why they’re putting all their efforts and money into passing anti-voting rights legislation at the state level. Trump is an unreliable wack-job, and it’s a fifty-fifty bet whether he’ll go too far and self-destruct, or end up in prison for his many crimes. Either way they’ll eventually lose his followers as a voting bloc, and without them they haven’t got a prayer.
The only way they can hold onto power is to cheat. The state-level legislation they’re passing not only makes it extremely difficult for people who live in cities to vote, it provides Republican legislators the ability to override their citizens’ votes if they don’t like the way it’s going. Between that override, vote suppression tactics, and their outrageous district gerrymandering, soon they will no longer need Trump and his horde of crazies. Voting itself will be superfluous.