Republican Courage — and Its Absence
Democrats are often applauded for “standing up” to Mr. Trump — fighting his authoritarian impulses wherever they appear. But this is not quite courage.
It is the expectation. Their voters demand nothing less.
Republicans, however, face a very different reality.
Any GOP member who so much as clears his throat in dissent — Pence, Romney, the occasional apostate who murmurs about the Constitution — is rewarded not with applause, but with death threats, primaries, and exile from polite MAGA society.
A few are granted a curious indulgence: Senator Murkowski, Senator “I Have Concerns” Collins, the libertarian scruples of Rand Paul. They may raise eyebrows, provided they never raise votes.
But let us be clear: this is not merely a problem of individual cowardice.
It is a failure of leadership.
If the Republican caucus acted together when confronted with the manifestly absurd — the appointment of Hegseth at Defense, RFK Jr. at Health, tariffs written on cocktail napkins — unity would breed security. There is safety in numbers; even the mildly courageous could be brave.
Instead, we get Senator Tom Cotton solemnly explaining that survivors of a fishing-boat strike must be eliminated before they can dry wet cocaine underwater and without a boat smuggle it to Arkansas — where presumably it becomes fentanyl and votes Democratic.
A party that once prided itself on Eisenhower and Baker has been reduced to this.
Mitch McConnell, for all his transactional gifts, never truly drew the line.
Had he marshaled his caucus — in the first impeachment, in the second, in any number of quieter tests — courage might have gathered critical mass instead of going into hiding. Mike Johnson, in his short tenure, has shown no inclination to change the arithmetic.
The tragedy is not simply that Republicans fear Trump.
It is that they fear him more than they love the republic.
Until that changes, a single honest Republican will remain a target — while enough enablers remain to give Trumpism its governing majority.