This Is a Republican-Made Disaster
Trump is the madman abusing power and threatening monstrous war crimes, but the GOP empowered him.
Americans have begun to sense the scale of the catastrophe that Donald Trump’s second presidency has inflicted on all of us.
The year-one decimation of government functions, self-harm of high tariffs, brutality on city streets, and broad assault on the rule of law were bad enough. Now the mentally unbalanced commander in chief publicly threatens monstrous crimes in an ineptly-conceived war, trashing America’s global leadership while constituents suffer the economic consequences – among which spiking gas prices represent just the opening blow.
Trump seeks to corrupt this fall’s midterm elections that might constrain him. So far, he has failed.
That leaves a simple political question for 2026: whether American voters hold accountable the parties who caused this nightmare. Or, more precisely, the party – the Republican Party.
Yes, Trump is the madman abusing power. But the GOP has empowered him, long after the dangers became apparent.
In the history of America’s two-party system, rarely has one borne singular responsibility for so gravely damaging our country and the world. Ideological heterogeneity, geographic variation, and divided government usually disperse accountability and blame.
Not now. Republicans own this mess as unmistakably as the 19th-century Democrats who nearly shattered the United States to preserve slavery.
“The Civil War would be the only one that would even come close,” says Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse. The new Republican Party led by Abraham Lincoln saved the union then. Those parties bear no resemblance to Republicans and Democrats today.
Here, in an account of modern-day Republican culpability, the both-sides conventions of journalism might label this the mirror-image of a comparable modern Democratic failure. But it is not.
Have Democrats erased the economic pain accompanying globalization? Have they figured out how to protect the rights and dignity of transgender Americans without offending the prerogatives and sensibilities of others? Have they found a politically sustainable balance for orderly immigration under law?
No.
Have Democrats nominated the most compelling candidates lately?
Also no.
Hillary Clinton evoked viscerally negative reactions from many voters. Kamala Harris did not display firm convictions. Joe Biden was too old for an effective second term.
But their shortcomings were trivial alongside the Trump menace. And all three accurately warned the American people about him..
Biden sometimes struggled for words and walked unsteadily. Trump cannot think clearly and rationally, absorb information, or control his destructive impulses.
In 2015, President Barack Obama joined allies to forge a diplomatic agreement with Iran restraining its nuclear program. Over objections from his first-term Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Trump junked it and ultimately set the stage for this war.
In acquiescing across the board, the GOP’s failure of judgment, courage, and morality has no modern precedent. Nor did it require seeing Trump in office to understand the danger ahead.
After his own 2016 presidential bid faltered, Senator Ted Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar” unable to discern reality. Then-Senator Marco Rubio called him “an erratic individual” who could not be trusted with nuclear weapons.
“He’s a con man,” Rubio said. “I will never stop until we keep a con man from taking over the party of Reagan and the conservative movement.”
Rubio stopped, in exchange for power. The entire Republican Party stopped. Scattered resisters typically wait until they walk out the door.
Retiring Senator Mitch McConnell now opposes Trump’s most egregiously unfit nominees and publicly rejects the White House threat to abandon NATO. Following Jan. 6, as Senate Republican Leader, he might have foreclosed all of this by rallying votes to convict Trump on impeachment charges. He shrank from the risk.
Senator Bill Cassidy now says Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine crusade will “make America sicker.” Last year, Cassidy could have blocked Kennedy’s confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary. He also shrank under pressure.
So have scores of other Republican senators who agreed to install Trump’s fanatical wrecking crew and now scramble to shield constituents from harm. They stay silent as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth derides democratic allies, fires competent military officers, and invokes religion to glorify killing Iranians as ardently as an Islamic jihadist.
Timorous GOP lawmakers have refused to assert their constitutional power to authorize the war. They have also blocked Democratic efforts to stop it.
Trump’s deranged howling on social media – demanding that “crazy bastards” in Iran “Open the Fuckin’ Strait (of Hormuz)” or “a whole civilization will die” – left GOP officeholders ducking for cover before the president backed down to accept a two-week ceasefire. A few “formers” spoke out.
“He has gone insane, and all of you are complicit,” declared Trump’s one-time House ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, calling on administration officials to “intervene in Trump’s madness.”
“More people now should be calling for this man’s removal” under the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, added ex-Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
That will not happen. But voters will soon choose a new House and Senate.
Trump’s sub-40% public approval almost guarantees a Democratic takeover of the House. Their Senate prospects remain dicier, but Republicans must defend 22 seats they now hold.
No one knows how many Democrats can flip. According to independent pollster G. Elliott Morris, one-fourth of American adults can’t identify which party controls Congress; predicting their votes isn’t easy.
We can, however, easily identify who has imperiled our country so severely. With both arms and all 10 fingers, the Republican Party is holding the bag.
John Harwood is the former chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and White House correspondent for CNN. He has interviewed every president from George H.W. Bush to Joe Biden. Sign up for ‘The Stakes with John Harwood’ to get all of his columns in your inbox.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
Check out more from Zeteo:
I don’t see Israel mentioned anywhere in your article! What we have been witnessing in this nation for DECADES is a slow, steady coup by the obviously criminal Zionist state. JFK warned about it in the mid 50’s and was assassinated less than a decade later. Coincidence?
Now we have the deranged Agent Orange twisting himself into a hideous pretzel to follow Satanyahu’s bidding.
Dig a little deeper, Mr. Harwood. There are more dots to connect.
The GOP is empowering Netanyahu as well.