Trump's megalomania is a trap for the GOP

Trump’s megalomania is a trap for the GOP
"His general odiousness represents a path to electoral calamity in 2024 for the GOP"

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED MARCH 29, 2024 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) It has long been a truism in modern America that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” Of course, like most truisms and folk wisdom, that is not entirely true in practice. During the Cold War (and in earlier eras as well), there have been serious and deep divides and fissures between the right and the left about how the country should approach power, politics, and influence abroad. In one of the most notable examples, there were partisan divides about the Vietnam War. Democrats and Republicans often disagreed about how to approach foreign policy in Latin and South America. The Iran-Contra scandal and support for the Nicaraguan anti-Communist guerrillas are infamous examples.

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Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of the National Interest and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is the author of the new book "America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators." His previous books include "They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons."

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During the 1980s and 1990s, my mentors and others who I respected were heavily involved in the anti-Apartheid movement. How can we trace support by Reagan and the Republicans for that white supremacist regime to the continuing admiration of such “ethnonationalism” if not outright racist and white supremacist policies that are being advanced by Putin, Orbán, and others?

I trace it all the way back to Lothrop Stoddard and the 1920s. How conscious they are of this intellectual thread is an open question. But the latest generation has definitely glommed onto and revived some of the most deplorable, if I may use that word, beliefs from the past. They were confined to the margins in Europe after World War II. But nolens volens they have reemerged as the right depicts itself as the one movement ready and prepared to defend the ethnic composition of the nation-state, whether in Russia or America. It is shocking that the Volkish thinking that historians such as George Mosse or Fritz Stern described and analyzed has been creeping back into respectability. The politics of cultural despair that Stern described has proved hardier than most historians would have expected. But once again, it offers a reminder that Trump is simply packaging old wine in new bottles.

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What gives you the most fear in this moment and looking forward? What if anything gives you hope?

The most disturbing thing remains Trump’s enablers—the incense-burners, the bootlickers, the pursuivants who can ensure that his tyrannical ambitions are realized. That Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell truckled to Trump by endorsing him is further testament to the hollow men that are leading the GOP. At the same time, I remain convinced that Trump’s megalomania — his growing radicalism, his frequent threats, his general odiousness — represents a path to electoral calamity in 2024 for the GOP. .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/03/29/trumps-megalomania-is-a-trap-for-the/