'We Need a Strong Republican Party,' Democrats Always Say. How About a Strong Democratic One?
After nine years of Trump, Chuck Schumer wants you to think there are some Republicans just waiting for the right time to be noble.
One of the most tired and incomprehensible refrains in American Democratic politics is that “We need a [strong, healthy, insert-mindless-adjective-here] Republican Party.”
Doug Emhoff and Nancy Pelosi said it in 2024 – just before the Democrats lost to Donald Trump for the second time. Here’s Barack Obama in 2016, before Democrats lost to Trump the first time: “I want a serious, effective Republican Party, in part to challenge some of the blind spots and dogmas in the Democratic Party.”
Even back in 2011, before Trump entered the scene, Joe Biden was calling for a "strong Republican Party.”
And the idea emerged again just this week, as Senator Chuck Schumer decided to bail Republicans out, instead of using one of Democrats’ sole tools of leverage, by supporting the GOP spending bill.
"Look, I talk to a lot of these Republican legislators. I’ve worked with them. Some of them are Trump devotees,” he told the New York Times over the weekend. “But many of them don’t like him, don’t respect him, and worry about what he’s doing to our country,” he added, after Trump’s first election nine years ago, his run again as the party’s nominee in 2020, and his success as their nominee again in 2024.
“The Republicans would like to have some freedom from Trump, but they won’t until we bring him down in popularity…when it happens, I am hopeful that our Republican colleagues will resume working with us.…I believe Republican senators, on this issue, will stand up. I’ve talked to some of them. About five or six have said publicly they will work to uphold the courts, and to uphold the law if Trump tries to break it."
Astounding. Trust in Republicans to uphold the law and stand against Trump if he breaks the law? He tried stealing an election, was found liable for sexual abuse, is a serial white-collar criminal, and just this week, he appeared to have defied a court order as he sent more than 100 Venezuelans to El Salvador to apparently become slave labor in a prison.
Have any free speech-defending Republicans stood up to Trump as he’s begun shadowy detaining operations for anyone whose speech his administration decides is inconvenient to their agenda?
Surely the Lindsey Graham cadre has resisted Trump’s cozying up to autocrats? Not so much.