Will the GOP's long-term costs of casting their lot with a con artist outweigh the immediate benefits of standing by a Republican president who retains the impassioned approval of the GOP faithful? EricLevitz writes
Never regret. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images Devin Nunes didn’t come here to make friends. The ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee — and the lead heel in the special television event we call impeachment — did not use his opening remarks Wednesday to win hearts and minds in purple America. Instead, Nunes preached directly to the amygdalae of the conservative choir.
Politico co-founder John F. Harris says yes. In a column titled “What Impeachment Will Cost the GOP,” Harris suggests that conservatives will come to regret legitimizing Trump’s lawless expansions of executive power and that up-and-coming Republican lawmakers will find their reputations irreparably tainted by their association with Trump’s defense:
In my view, the Haleys and Hawleys of the world have a clearer sense of their own best interests than their center-right skeptics do. On a bad day, Trump still boasts the approval of about three-quarters of Republican voters. The party’s core interest groups and media apparatus are still tied to him at the hip. If Trump loses in a landslide in 2020, he’ll surely forfeit some standing in the eyes of the GOP base.
All of which is to say: Ambitious Republican lawmakers may be wise to avoid playing Nunes’s part in the impeachment drama and thereby defining themselves as ruthless Trump apologists. But they’d also be fools to play the role of conscientious objector in “the Democrats’ scorched-earth war against president Trump.” “My party, right or wrong” will remain the Republican base’s ethos well into the future.
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