Peter Wehner: “We’re watching Trump-induced idiocy. For more than seven years, Republicans have defended Trump’s cruel, unethical, and deranged behavior. They are constantly having to deny what they have become in service to him. It’s created cognitive dissonance. How can the party of “family values” defend a moral degenerate like Trump? How can law-and-order Republicans defend a violent insurrection and threats against judges and prosecutors? How can “constitutional conservatives” rally around a man who attempted to subvert the Constitution by overthrowing an election?”
“The human mind’s capacity to rationalize such things is extraordinary, but not limitless. Some Republicans have the sense, even if it’s only in their quiet moments, that they have acted not only hypocritically but dishonorably. And it gnaws at them. They know they would eviscerate any Democrat who did a fraction of what Trump did. They therefore have to expend enormous psychological energy to keep from becoming sick with themselves for what they have become. Shame is a toxic emotion, and it often causes people to direct hostility outward rather than inward…”
“As we’ve seen in Tennessee, this frantic state of mind leads Republicans to preposterous places and to act in politically self-destructive ways. One of the two most important political parties in the world is dominated by people who are enraged, embittered, and anarchic.”
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