'Raving-mad criminal': Why Trump’s GOP critics can’t save US from a 'nakedly authoritarian demagogue'

02 October 2023

In the 2020 presidential election, a long list of prominent conservatives favored Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump — including Cindy McCain (the late Sen. John McCain's widow), former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and media figures like The Washington's Max Boot, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes.

Anti-Trump conservatives have been part of the Biden coalition. But journalist Jonathan Chait, in an article published by New York Magazine on October 2, warns that there may not be enough of them to save Biden's 2024 campaign if Trump is the nominee.

Even some outspoken Trump critics in the GOP, Chait notes, won't rule out the possibility of voting for him in 2024 —including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.

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"Over the past week, Donald Trump publicly demanded that former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley be put to death for having confided to a journalist that Trump, as president, had proposed shooting peaceful demonstrators and a variety of other crimes," Chait observes. "He threatened government retribution against media companies that publish reporting he doesn't approve of…. And, of course, he continued his drumbeat of false claims of having legitimately won the 2020 election. This was all in a week."

Chait notes that despite Trump's history of making racist comments, polls show him "continuing to gain support from Black and Latino voters — gains that, if they materialize at the polls, would give him a chance to win the national vote outright."

"Since these trends have put a nakedly authoritarian demagogue on the precipice of regaining the presidency," Chait warns, "this is indeed a crisis for democracy."

Chait adds that there may not be enough outright Never Trumpers in the GOP in 2024 to make a difference.

Chait laments, "The dark reality is that the Republican Party is increasingly converging on the belief that Trump's main failure was not to have tried to use the government to shut down independent media and prosecute his enemies, but to have been unable to carry it out… The Republicans who genuinely object to authoritarianism have all been driven out of the party. Those that remain simply regard partisan defection as an unthinkable breach, even if the alternative is electing a literal raving-mad criminal who is openly vowing to use the presidency as an instrument of vengeance."

Read Jonathan Chait's full New York Magazine article at this link.

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