During my 16 years in Congress, from 2001 to 2017, I worked closely with Republicans in the House and, occasionally, in the Senate. Still, as I watched my former colleagues defend the president during his impeachment trial, I was struck by the same question that baffles many: Why didn’t more Republican senators convict President Trump, or at least allow additional witnesses in his impeachment trial? My conversations with lawmakers, and my own experiences in Congress, offer up a theory.
Republican members of Congress broadly fall into two types: those who, on principle, have always supported the president, and those who, fearing electoral consequences, have rationalized their decision to stick with him.
When I think of this second type, I remember a House Republican who once told me he thought Donald Trump would destroy his party. Then, in the summer of 2016, I ran into him at an airport. He told me he’d just received the results of a poll.
“Who do you think is the most popular candidate in my district?” he asked.
“You?” I responded. (Congressional protocol requires consistent flattery.)
“Nope. Donald Trump.”
And so he began to shift his position. At first, he dipped in a toe, declining to criticize Mr. Trump when given the chance. Then, when he saw dissenting Republicans defeated in primaries or humiliated in tweets, he waded in deeper, publicly coming to Mr. Trump’s defense. Now, he’s undergone a baptism. When I recently asked him about Mr. Trump’s behavior, he told me about the strength of the economy, the reduction in taxes and regulation, and the danger of extremist Democrats.
How did he go from “Never Trump” to “never allow a witness who might implicate Trump”?
He’s part of a growing wing of the Republican Party: the rationalizers.
I’m familiar with political rationalization — I watched and even practiced it during my time in Congress. Like erosion, political rationalization is incremental, shaped by harsh winds and climates over a period of time. It usually begins when a small issue meets a larger electoral consequence. Constituents push you to vote “yes” when you want to vote “no,” so you rationalize: “I’ll wait for someone else to put it over the top, then my ‘yes’ vote won’t mean as much.” Or: “I’ll vote yes, but the Senate will defeat it. Or the president won’t sign it. Or if it does become law, well, there’s always the Supreme Court.”
Pressured by re-election, you make a tiny, inconsequential concession on a specific issue or vote. Nothing more than a small chip off your principles.
Early in my career, I had my own moment of rationalization. In 2001, only six months after being sworn into the House of Representatives, President George W. Bush proposed significant tax cuts. I was deeply concerned about their impact on the debt, but my polling showed that voting against lower taxes in my Republican-leaning districts was politically fatal. So I rationalized: “This will be the last tax cut I support” (it wasn’t); “the deficits will be offset” (they weren’t); “by voting with Republicans on this, it gives me more credibility to vote against them on other issues” (actually, in that case, it did).
An occasional concession does no harm to democracy. But when justifying compromises becomes an operating system — when each day, politicians contort their views to fit the politically popular, as ordained by the president — our representatives become unrecognizable. They transform from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde — or 2016 Lindsey Graham to 2020 Lindsey Graham.
The pull to rationalize is made stronger by the fact that the president doesn’t allow for nuance in the Republican ranks. You’re either with or against him. Several Republicans have told me the story of Representative Mac Thornberry, a Republican from Texas, who announced in September that he was not running for re-election.
Two months later, he was asked on ABC News about Mr. Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president. Included in his otherwise fulsome defense of the president was this: “I believe it was inappropriate. I do not believe it was impeachable.” Hours later, Mr. Trump tweeted: “Republicans, don’t be led into the fools trap of saying it was not perfect, but is not impeachable. No, it is much stronger than that. NOTHING WAS DONE WRONG!”
Message received: If your support of President Trump isn’t complete and unequivocal, he will go after you in a viral tweet.
As Republicans flock behind the president, they start to believe his exaggerations and misinformation. Soon, an initial concession of a few inches widens to an inescapable partisan trench. What was once an adopted position — a line pushed by the president — becomes a tribal truth. It’s the Ukrainians who meddled not the Russians. Separating children from parents and putting them in detention centers is an exaggerated liberal narrative. The real problem isn’t President Trump, it’s Hunter Biden. There’s no more dancing around these issues; now they stomp in unison.
Pragmatism, compromise and even ideological agility have always been part of politics. But what is happening now is dangerous. The rationalizers aren’t just turning against their own principles; many are turning against fundamental norms of democracy. The constant rationalization has made them unrecognizable. Unlike the Republicans who were Trumpian even before Donald Trump, the rationalizers have forgotten that what they now believe they once made up.
So they will stick with Mr. Trump. No matter how damning the facts or clear the evidence, they will defend him.
For so many of them, the loyalty is, well, quite rational.
Steve Israel served as a Democratic representative in Congress from New York from 2001 to 2017. He is the author, most recently, of the novel “Big Guns.”
