OPINION: The Republican Party Played with Fire—and Got Severely Burned
Then-candidate Donald Trump speaking at an Iowa rally. (Wikimedia Commons)
Ayushman Ghosh (SFS ‘23) is a regular Caravel contributor and a guest writer for the Caravel's opinion section. The content and opinions of this piece are the writer’s and the writer’s alone. They do not reflect the opinions of the Caravel or its staff.
January 6, 2021 was a dark day in the history of the United States. Five people, including a police officer, died as a result of the Capitol Hill riots, and the event represented a grave threat to America’s democracy—led by its own citizens. The manner in which then-President Donald Trump’s supporters entered and wreaked havoc on the Capitol in order to attempt to stop Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory—and Trump’s loss—resembled nothing short of an attempted coup. It was Trump’s last attempt to remain in the Oval Office, despite losing the fair election conducted two months before, and he had been laying the groundwork for this situation for months.
The Months Leading Up to the Riots
As far back as April 2020, Trump was complaining about potential voter fraud in the election. In November 2020, as he started to fall behind in the vote tallies, he started tweeting about how the election was rigged, spreading baseless claims about dead people voting and sharpie pens invalidating ballots. Trump supporters became enraged at the claims that their president had the election stolen from him, and they started to organize protests. Some even threatened local election workers. However, after many court cases failed and the Electoral College met in December, Trump had pinned his last electoral hopes on a single event—stopping the Senate from certifying Biden’s victory in January. Republican lawmakers Josh Hawley (R-MI), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) promised to challenge the results from specific states in the Senate, while Trump demanded that his Vice President, Mike Pence, stop the certification as Senate Leader. Pence refused, citing his constitutional duty to carry out the process.
Trump also turned to his supporters. The Proud Boys, a pro-Trump right-wing group, had been planning a protest in D.C. on January 6 in an attempt to prevent the election certification. The Proud Boys’ conversations leading up to the event included discussion of armed protests and storming the Capitol. Trump even encouraged these protestors with a speech at his rally in the hours before the rioting. When it comes to finding who is responsible for this mess, it’s obvious to point at Trump. In an infamous term riddled with scandal, Trump’s encouragement of the Capitol riots is the crowning jewel. However, the blame goes much deeper than that. The Republican Party supported and enabled Trump throughout his campaign and presidency, directly leading to the events of January 6.
I Serve at the Pleasure of the President
Donald Trump entered the Republican primary on June 15, 2016, and he kicked off a campaign with a bombastic style based on personal attacks, political incorrectness, nativism, and overall divisiveness. Many prominent Republicans were wary of Trump from the beginning; senior party figures including then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) openly criticized him. Despite this, many of these Republicans actually voted for Trump for the sake of party power, with Ryan specifically endorsing him because he would support the Republicans’ legislative agenda.
Republicans’ support for Trump grew after he took office; campaign-trail enemies became his best defenders. After his rebuke of Trump as a candidate, Lindsey Graham morphed into one of Trump’s top allies in the Senate. He stood by him after suspicious, potentially illegal actions like firing FBI Director James Comey and requesting Ukrainian officials for information on now-President Joe Biden’s campaign, for which he was impeached by the House. Former primary challengers like Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who had been extremely critical of Trump, also became staunch defenders in these cases. The Republican Congress further shielded Trump for his questionable actions by supporting him during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history and refusing to investigate his tax returns when they controlled the House.
Almost all Republicans lawmakers served at the pleasure of Trump by defending his actions at every turn, even his most suspicious ones. This enabled him to continue his reckless leadership style, often involving moves to keep him in power. The Republican Congress’s continuous support for Trump represented a cushion of support for the president and a sign that he could go further in doing whatever he pleased.
A New Identity
During Trump’s term, Republicans became an enabling factor outside of Washington, with the party embracing Trump’s far right base. His own campaign began with preaching far-right nativist views, and it has ushered in a cohort of new Republican candidates holding views similar to his—and some have a troubling history of insensitive comments and actions.
Laura Loomer, who won the Republican nomination for Florida’s 21st district, has been banned from all social media networks for hate speech, especially against Muslims. Moreover, a lot of these extreme Republicans believe in conspiracy theories, with House candidates like Angela Stanton King and Marjorie Taylor Green (who won her election, and has already been removed from House committees), have expressed support for QAnon, a dangerous right-wing misinformation campaign that claims Democratic politicians promote child sex abuse and that 5G mobile networks spread the coronavirus, among other false theories. Many prominent Republicans, including Trump himself, have failed to denounce these baseless theories.
Given that Republicans have embraced their shift further right under Trump, it shows that they have accepted that right-wing populism is the way forward for the party.
A Republican-Created Insurgency
In light of the Republicans’ actions during Trump’s presidency, is it surprising that the Capitol riots actually happened? The Republicans’ continued enabling of Trump, despite his most questionable actions, created the sense of security for whatever actions he took. The GOP-led Senate’s defense during the Comey situation and Trump’s first impeachment trial suggested that they would also be there for him to contest the results when he lost the election. That’s why his faith in Congress to deliver him the election wasn’t wrongly placed. A total of 179 Republican lawmakers opposed the election results—or around a third of Congress. Despite no solid evidence of election fraud, many Republicans wanted to stay in the good graces of Trump and his supporters. This support for Trump’s rejection of the election results not only motivated him to continue fighting his lost battle, they also gave his supporters false hope—and righteous anger.
By endorsing his false theories about widespread voter fraud, Republican lawmakers gave more reason for Trump’s far right base to believe that the Democrats were stealing their election. A lot of these supporters were already being represented by the new wave of Republicans: right-wing, nativist, xenophobic, and conspiracy theory-promoting politicians. With these leaders siding with Trump themselves, it wasn’t really hard for Trump’s right-wing base to believe that mass voter fraud actually occurred.
Republicans made many believe that Democrats were snatching away America’s democracy, which led the far-right to act the way they did at the Capitol. So, the Republican party’s blame for the riots cannot be placed solely on their actions after the 2020 election. Instead, the riots were a boiling point for the Republican party’s actions throughout Trump’s presidency: supporting him even for his most suspicious actions, and appealing to the new right-wing base Trump had brought.
Playing with Fire
Many may wonder in hindsight why most Republicans jumped on the Trump train in the first place. The answer is easy: political power. It was clear from his campaign’s beginning that many didn’t like Trump. However, they ended up voting for him and constantly enabled him throughout his term. There are several examples of this. According to a New Yorker report, even though former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) loathed Trump, he teamed up with him to pursue the Republican legislative agenda and to secure elections for Republicans. This is apparent in the case of Graham as well, who went from being one of Trump’s most ferocious critics to one of his fiercest allies. Many think he started increasing his public support for the president so he could appeal to his own base in South Carolina, which was increasingly favoring Trump. This was seen even after Trump lost, when Republican congressmen like Hawley and Cruz challenged the election results. Many saw it as a way to secure the support of Trump’s base—and possibly the Republican nomination for president in 2024.
So, in an attempt to capture political power, Republican leaders completely bought into Trump’s presidency and started shaping the party around it, despite him being against their own ideals. They supported the president whenever they could, and that was almost always. They started building a base of Trump’s right-wing supporters within the party, only for them to become the face of it. The Republican Party enabled Donald Trump and all of his actions, including those leading up to the riot, which will be a defining moment in the Republicans’ legacy.
It’s also a sign that Republicans lost their identity under Trump. As politicians, they let the president use them however they wanted him to, never letting honesty and true justice prevail when it came to him. But as a party itself, it chose to play into Trump’s base and make them the face of the party. No longer is the Republican Party the party of small government people and fiscal and religious conservatives; it has become a right-wing party under Trump. All of this was on full display during the riot, with the anti-Semitic rhetoric and the confederate flag on full display at the Capitol. The Republicans were an enabling factor in the riots, and they are already facing the consequences. Many corporate donors have stopped their cash flow to the party or to candidates who egged on the rioters, which could be a long-term concern in the wake of what is turning out to be a defining moment for the party.
The most important consequence of the riot is the image it will create for the Republican party. They could have stopped the riot from happening in the first place, but they didn’t. Some Republicans are starting to alienate the president, with even Graham saying, “enough is enough.” But Republicans have blood on their hands, and everybody can see that. People are holding Republican leaders responsible for the Capitol Hill riot, as they enabled Trump to spread false information and prepare his base.
If you play with fire, you get burned. Most Republicans played with fire by choosing to go all in with Donald Trump in an attempt to secure political power for themselves and for the party. Now, as the riots have proven, they have been severely burned, and they will have to face the consequences.
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