Republican Love Of Trump To Go Down The Memory Hole

Did you guys know that FiveThirtyEight has a database which simply keeps track of how often members of Congress vote with Trump? While the day before the end of the Trump administration might seem like an odd time to tell those uninformed about this fact, but I do think it is worth keeping an eye on as the Republican Party goes forward.

For example, once Chair of the House Republican Conference Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, voted for impeachment, it was treated as a big deal by both sides. The fact that she voted with President Trump 92.9% of the time was completely forgotten by both sides, one which tried to paint her as a traitor to Trump (side note: She does not serve Trump) and the other which tried to paint her as a brave woman standing up for what’s right (what she considers “right” is the man she voted to impeach over 90% of the time).

Dan Crenshaw, who voted by proxy against Trump’s impeachment after spending months calling proxy voting “cowardly”, defended Cheney on 1/13/2021 by saying the following:

Let’s get some truth on the record: @Liz_Cheney has a hell of a lot more backbone than most, & is a principled leader with a fierce intellect. She will continue to be a much needed leader in the conference, with my full support.

Of course, this is easy for Crenshaw to say, as he has voted with Trump 88.9% of the time — including on two separate impeachment attempts. On the other end, Matt Gaetz (who has voted with Trump 85% of the time — meaning he does not vote with Trump nearly twice as often as Cheney does) simply said “Liz Cheney should not be the Chair of the Republican Conference,” on 1/16/2021. But that does not matter, Liz Cheney is now the ultimate anti-Trump force in the Republican Party and Matt Gaetz is an apologist — regardless of how they acted before that magical day on 1/13/2021.

Cheney is on the end of a certain group of Republicans, the kind of Republican who “fights the power” to get the cameras on her, no matter how little she had been doing so before. Early on in the Trump Administration, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake promised to resign because of Trump and compared Trump to Joseph Stalin on the floor of the Senate — it should be noted that he voted with Stalin over 80% of the time. But another thing I have often been floored by is how many of them are trying to portray themselves as the first Republican to do so. On 1/16/2021, Senator Ben Sasse (who votes with Trump 84.4% of the time) wrote an article in The Atlantic going after QAnon. The byline reading “Until last week, too many in the Republican Party thought they could preach the Constitution and wink at QAnon. They can’t.” “We can be the party of Eisenhower,” Sasse warns, “or the party of the conspiracist Alex Jones.”

Of course, Sasse had no issue pushing “conspiracy theories” when he blamed China for the COVID-19 pandemic in a speech just last year. Sasse is one of the worst offenders of the “anti-Trump Republican” crowds, every couple of months he makes headlines by going against Trump — and yet nobody can ever point towards a meaningful difference between them. The one time Sasse had a chance to prove he was different, during the Senate trail in early 2020, Sasse voted to acquit Trump.

As it stands, no Republican has done long-term resistance against the Trump administration. It is not as if I expected anything less — but I did at least expect some of them to not pretend otherwise. In the coming months, we will see more and more Republicans pretend that they opposed Trump long before they did, and all of them should be laughed out of the room for their lying behavior. Almost none of them can be considered “mavericks,” and the only reason that’s an issue is because they will pretend to be otherwise.

After the George W. Bush Administration, Republicans memory-holed him rather quickly. Nobody bragged about the accomplishments of Bush, and even things that started under Bush, such as the Great Recession, were the fault of Obama somehow. As it stands, it’s near certain these people have the same plan once Trump goes out of office — and if we aren’t careful they will get away with it.