Scott Tibbs
Republicans must destroy the cult of personality
By Scott Tibbs, August 5, 2020
One of the reasons I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 was the cult mentality surrounding him. It remains frustrating, but that frustration has also expanded to the small minority of anti-Trump Republicans. Liz Cheney has been one of the few to resist that trend. From
National Review:
(Cheney) rightly refuses to play by the dumb rule insisted on by MAGA and Never-Trump Republicans from their respective parts of the spectrum, that the only two options are to submit to the president totally or to oppose him totally, with no honorable space in between.
It is bad for the Republican Party and bad for the country when Republican voters, pundits and elected officials process everything through the filter of personal loyalty to Donald Trump. No matter how loyal you have been in the past, and no matter how much you have supported and defended Trump and his agenda up until now, one act of dissent means you are a bad person.
On the anti-Trump side, defending Trump when he is right, or announcing that you will vote for him in spite of his flaws due to the alternative, means you are a sellout and you have abandoned your principles.
This is not how normal people operate. This is how a cult operates. At some point, Trump will be gone - perhaps in 2021 and perhaps in 2025. The Republican Party needs to be about more than a personality cult around or against one man. When Trump is gone and we have to forge a post-Trump Republican Party, do you think it is wise to have been viciously attacking people who are allies 90% of the time for the last four or eight years, because of disagreement over an intentionally divisive President?
It never had to be this way. Trump is thin-skinned and petulant, and he was always going to be petty and childish regarding the most recent thing someone has done or said, regardless of past loyalty. The Republican Party and the conservative movement should have refused to go along with it. Had they showed just a tiny bit of backbone, both the party
and Donald Trump himself would be in a much better political position today. It is not too late to reverse that self-destructive mentality, so learn to think for yourself.
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