GOP Caught Between Trump-Loving Base And A Dangerous, Corrupt President

In the aftermath of yesterday's shocking revelation that James Comey has written contemporaneous memos of his conversations with Trump, one of which describes Trump as asking Comey to "let this [his investigation of NSA Flynn] go", a clear obstruction of justice, Republicans have largely gone dark, either refusing to speak or curtly saying they want more information.

Putting aside congressional Republicans' obligation to fulfill their constitutional duties and actually exercise their responsibilities as a co-equal branch in the government, or the obligation to defend the United States from a foreign threat, or the simple call of patriotism, Republicans are now boxed in politically as well. As Joy Reid pointed out on the Last Word last night, Republicans face the choice of abandoning President Trump and losing their base in the 2018 election or continuing to enable this disastrous President in order to try and pass their massively unpopular agenda and forever be stained by history. The former guarantees a 2018 electoral wipeout. The latter, assuming they can actually pass the AHCA and tax cuts plus help from extreme gerrymandering, may allow enough of them to survive that election.

So far, congressional Republicans have chosen the latter approach. Reid points out that so much of the GOP base now lives inside the right-wing media bubble which believes the Russian investigation is a hoax and the intelligence community and the bureaucracy is sabotaging Trump because he wants to "drain the swamp". The unreal world inhabited by the pro-Trump base makes it impossible for congressional Republicans to act on the most obvious solution. Replacing Trump with Mike Pence eliminates all the "drama" and puts in place a man who is used to working in Congress to actually pass legislation. With Pence as President, the GOP agenda would have a much greater chance of being enacted than continuing to enable Trump. But, because of the base, the GOP is paralyzed.

In fact, doing nothing may create the worst of both worlds. Republicans continue to enable Trump and he keeps moving from one disaster to another. Because of Trump's continual chaos and the relentless resistance of those opposed to the GOP agenda, the AHCA and tax cuts never get passed. Pence, who is already tainted with his involvement in Trump's lies, becomes even more compromised going forward. And they end up heading into 2018 with a massively unpopular President, a damaged Vice President, and no results to offer their rabid base, who will wonder what giving the GOP total power actually accomplished. They will have lost their base and the rest of the electorate and will go down in history as enablers of one of the most dangerous and corrupt Presidents in modern history.

And one last point that is often overlooked in the focus on Trump's connections with the Russians is that Republicans in Congress were also aided by the Russian hacking and knowingly used material stolen by the Russians to advance their campaigns. According to the NY Times, House races in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina were targeted by hackers with much of the attacks being based on data stolen from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). These attacks were hardly random as they targeted some of the races that were supposed to be the most competitive in the fall election. The details released contained the DCCC's blunt assessment of the Democratic candidates' weaknesses and also revealed their election strategies. This kind of in-depth knowledge of House races raises the possibility, if not probability, that some sort of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians to direct the hackers to focus on these hotly contested House seats eventually won by Republicans. The head of the DCCC wrote to his counterpart at the NRCC and Nancy Pelosi also wrote to Paul Ryan imploring them not to use this stolen material. As the head of the DCCC wrote, "Put simply, if this action continues, the N.R.C.C. will be complicit in aiding the Russian government in its effort to influence American elections." Neither Democrat even received a response and stolen documents ended up in being used in the fall campaign in multiple elections.

So, besides the political bind that Republicans find themselves in, caught between a Trump-loving base and a dangerous and corrupt President, there is also a certain reluctance among congressional Republicans to pursue the Russian investigation simply because some of them were complicit in the attack on our democracy. The Russians did not intervene in our election to get Trump elected, they intervened to get Republicans elected. We should never lose sight of that.