I, like a solid majority of my countrymen, will celebrate the end of the national train wreck that was the Trump presidency.  But that celebration must be tempered by a sober understanding that the nightmare will not end until the competitiveness of the GOP no longer depends on the lunatic fringe.

NBC News reported yesterday that the vast galaxy of the far right is splintered into two principal groups.  One is largely motivated by QAnon adherents who believe that Inauguration Day will be the climactic realization of their prophecy, when Trump will force a 10-day countrywide blackout that ends in military tribunals, the mass execution of his political enemies, and a second Trump term.  You read that right, mass execution.  On the other hand, the cluster of various anti-government hard-core Trumpists call this magical thinking, and insist on more practical and proactive steps to bring about the required violent insurrection and a second term for Trump. 

Sure, kooks and zealots have been around for a long time.  Before, they were few in number and isolated.  Now, they are united by the internet and number in the tens of millions.   Before, their vile nonsense could be spoken only in furtive meetings of militias and hate groups, now the President of the United States has given them permission to speak it out loud.   Before, they were despised and ridiculed by both major political parties, now, they are indispensable to the political fortunes of one of those parties, whose leader calls them “good people” who (even as they attempted to reverse the election through violence) he “loves.”  

The result? As of three days ago, polls showed 30% of the GOP had a favorable view of QAnon, and a few days before that (but in both cases after the attempted insurrection), 49% of Republicans opposed proceeding with the inauguration of the new president.   When 30-40 million Americans lose faith in democracy, anchor their politics in preposterous delusions, support an authoritarian demagogue, and remain essential to the fortunes of one of our two established political parties, our constitutional democracy remains in peril, despite the coming transfer of power.

It is tempting to take some comfort in the good sense and relative grounding of the slim majority of GOP voters who are embarrassed by QAnon and reject the stolen election delusion, but it would be a mistake to expect that embarrassment to translate into abandonment of the GOP on future election days.  Even after the shambolic catastrophe of the past four years, more people voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016.   Why?  This is the era of identity politics, and when shifting your partisan allegiance requires you to swap out your essential sense-of-self for a different one, it becomes very hard to do.  As a result, solving this problem in the long term cannot depend on the Democrats reliably and consistently defeating the GOP in elections, instead it requires that the GOP/conservative movement reform and transform itself from within. 

The question for the country is whether the Republican leadership is likely to ostracize the kooks, repudiate Christian nationalism and white supremacy, and wean its members away from the dangerous hallucinogen that was Trumpism and its supporting pathologies.

Of course, from a moral and patriotic standpoint, we have every right to require that the GOP do this as a condition to retaining its standing as a legitimate political party, i.e., one sworn to work within the constitutional system.   But that’s not the question.   The question in front of us is will existing or emerging leaders on the right actually do it. 

The matter will be decided by political calculation, not moral suasion.  Will Trump become toxic?  Not likely – more likely a martyr to the cause.  Does the path to power within the party come from gaining the mantle of Trump, which in turn will mean deifying him in the manner of Chavez and Castro?  That was the orthodox expectation that caused 147 Republican Congressmen to throw democracy under the bus in pursuit of personal power.   But perhaps after January 6 that expectation is changing?   But even if the Trumpian cult has been weakened by January 6, will support of the Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and other extremists continue to be only path to victory in a GOP primary, as it has been from a time long before Trump?  Probably, unless . . .

Two recent incidents remind us of the role of money in politics.  One is how quickly the media suspended promoting conspiracies regarding Dominion voting machines when the company sued them for the billions in damages caused by these fantasies.  The other is how many companies have made their own economic calculation regarding the unacceptable cost to their businesses of supporting the GOP sedition caucus, advertising on Fox hosts promoting the stolen election falsehood, and doing business with the Trump Organization.   Money may be the sole lever than can persuade the GOP to escape its domination by kooks and extremists, and take the difficult step of rebuilding a coalition that can win without them.   Money also can help break the grip of Fox, which controls the information flow to the conservative half of the country.  Ironically, Fox started as the house organ for the conservative movement, but during the Trump administration turned the tables and instead ended up dictating policy and messaging to a media-obsessed President with few ideas of his own.   Withdrawn advertising and boycotts can incentivize Fox to reinvent itself as once again doing actual journalism, perhaps still with a right-leaning bent, but recognizing the diversity of views on the right and never again acting as the author and enforcer of a prevailing orthodoxy.  

The other lever that could influence the political calculation of the GOP is legal peril.   The Biden administration, while respecting the First Amendment, must diligently prosecute the myriad criminal infractions by armed militias, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, promoters of conspiracies, and far-right extremists of all sorts, and amplify the risk of legal jeopardy for all who support them.   When the Trump administration’s own national security apparatus calls them the leading national security threat to the United States, the Biden Justice Department has an opening to act as aggressively as they would in the case of foreign terrorism. 

While these levers can provide incentives, breaking the grip the far right has on the GOP requires envisioning and then building a GOP coalition that can win without the far right.  This is a huge opportunity for ambitious young conservatives.  Ironically, Trump’s 2016 coalition showed the way by appealing to middle class voters excluded from the economic booms of the past decades.   

Ironically, to save America, Democrats and independents must work to make it possible for the GOP to reinvent itself in a way that provides conservative Americans with an alternative to fascist authoritarianism.  This will be hard for progressives to accept.  But if the GOP remains in the grip of Trump, or a post-Trump GOP remains in the grip of the lunatic right, then, as David Axelrod put it, the events of January 6 will prove to be a “dismal landmark on the way to ruin.”