For all those horrified by Donald Trump’s presidency – the multitudes both in the US and around the world – there is much to savour in the outspoken attacks made by two Republican senators. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, liberated by impending retirement, launched a powerful dual attack on Tuesday: Mr Flake denounced Mr Trump’s “reckless, outrageous” behaviour, while Mr Corker, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, warned that the president is debasing the US with “constant non-truth-telling”. No president in recent history has been spoken about so scathingly by legislators from his own party.
Yet the headlines should not mislead us. Mr Flake and Mr Corker once supported Mr Trump (Mr Corker was even considered a potential vice-president) and have moved from outright opposition to full-throttle attack. They represent a span of opinion: Mr Flake is an arch-conservative, no hero for progressives, while Mr Corker is considered a moderate Republican. Their words have extra resonance following last week’s interventions by George W Bush, who condemned white supremacy, conspiracy theories and lies, and John McCain, who laid into “half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems”.
But the bigger news is that the vast majority of Republicans remain craven and opportunist, refusing to renounce a disgraceful and dangerous administration; and that the most vociferous internal opposition comes from two departing senators (one of whom knew he would not win next time), a former president and a veteran politician reaching the end of his career and undergoing treatment for brain cancer. It is that the party apparatus is trying to carry on with business while the house is on fire. It is that the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, remain supine despite their evident despair and Mr Trump’s personal attacks on them.
The forthrightness of some Republican critics does not transform this narrative; it highlights the cowardice and cheapness of the others. Tellingly, Mr Flake’s speech was addressed not to the president, who appears largely beyond the reach of reason and certainly beyond concerns of decency, but to his peers, accusing them outright of complicity. They cannot deny the accuracy of the charges laid against Mr Trump; in many cases their own scathing opinions are on record. But when it became clear that he would win the nomination, they fell into line, and for the most part they remain there. That they denigrate him behind his back is irrelevant when they stand beside him in public. If the party will reach a turning point, there is no sign that it is there yet – and if Mr Trump’s behaviour and actions to date have not pushed them to their limits, what will?
Motives are mixed. Despite his historic levels of unpopularity overall, he continues to enjoy the support of most of those who voted for him and disdain what they see as the old, patrician party elite. Legislators are attempting to hold together a party which – like the Democrats – is increasingly fractured and incoherent; hoping to prevent a challenge to their own seats by unsavoury populists along the lines of Roy Moore in Alabama; and trying to push through their agenda, notably tax cuts, both from ideological zeal and electoral expediency: “There’s a lot of noise out there. Tax reform is what we are about,” was all Mr McConnell had to say this week.
The tax package has become all the more critical given the failure to repeal and replace Obamacare as promised. Should it run into trouble, Mr Trump may well face stormier weather. But his moral bankruptcy and unfitness for office were evident long before he reached the White House. Each day he has spent in power has amplified his failings – and the party’s abnegation of its duty in refusing to face that head-on. Mr Trump is a catastrophe for his party, for his country and for the world. Republicans should say so.
