Three paths to containing Trump

But this craven unheroism, which ushered Cheney out of the Republican leadership, is not actually crazy. Let’s assume that polarization and the fear of liberalism will keep Republicans competitive in almost any circumstance. In that case, as Andrew Prokop pointed out last month, making internal G.O.P. politics a sustained referendum on anti-Trumpism might just magnify his power, help his worst loyalists win primaries, and increase his capacity to demand destructive things. Whereas if responsible Republican officeholders ignore him they can hope to outlast him, and even if he takes the nomination again they will still be there (unlike Cheney, or Jeff Flake, or Justin Amash, or …) to play the same role they played in the aftermath of 2020, when none of the crucial Republican governors or secretaries of state (or for that matter Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices) went along with Trump’s more outrageous, election-overturning demands.
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