Sometimes a Political Party Is Sent into Exile

“A Rebuke to President Trump”—that’s how the news reports described the “Blue Tsunami” that swept the nation on November 3. True—but that’s only half the story. It was also a rebuke to the Republican Party that has been rubber-stamping even Trump’s most outrageous and illegal choices.

Time will tell how long-lasting this rejection of the Republican Party will be. But American history suggests a striking possibility.

Twice before in American history, a political party has so discredited itself that the American electorate has consigned it to a prolonged exile from power.

Between 1856 and 1912, only one Democrat was elected President (Grover Cleveland), largely as a consequence of that Party’s connection with the Slave Power that had driven the nation into the nightmare of the Civil War.

And the Republican Party was shut out of the White House from 1932 to 1952, winning the Presidency again only with a war hero whom the Democrats had also sought to head their ticket (Eisenhower). That prolonged exile was in large part a punishment for twelve years of Republican Presidents leading the nation into the Great Depression, which the last of them (Herbert Hoover) mismanaged.

But never before has a major American political party so deserved banishment from power as today’s Republican Party.

Not only did this Party nominate Donald Trump again, even after his criminality, dishonesty, and corruption had been on display for all the world to see. When he returned to power and set about attacking the fundamental structures of the Constitutional order, Republicans in Congress actively enabled his assault, despite the solemn oath each had sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.

They confirmed Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. And they supported Trump as he wielded powers the Constitution denied him.

And it was easy to see why the Republicans in Congress were so willing to enable him. The Republican base remained so loyal to Trump that he could destroy the political career of almost any Republican who stood up to him—which he did again and again.

With some sterling exceptions, like Liz Cheney, those Republicans who remained in positions of power were willing to betray the nation rather than sacrifice their own positions of power and privilege.

Moral failure at every level—from the President, through Congress, to the Republican base that gave Trump the power to demand unquestioning obedience of a Party whose “leaders” were so morally bankrupt they put their own political survival ahead of the most fundamental American values.

Today’s Republican Party deserves a prolonged exile from power. It deserves banishment until it can show that it has transformed itself back into something decent, and at least reasonably constructive.

But there is something Republicans could do now that would be a start in the Party’s redemption after these years of disgrace, and might help “reduce their sentence”: They could finally act to remove Donald Trump from the presidency.

One route would be impeachment.

Twice before, Trump was impeached, and twice, despite his offenses having been proved, Republicans in the Senate voted to acquit him. And the nation has paid an enormous price for that Republican abdication of duty. With this midterm election, the bill has come due for those Republicans as well.

Which is why a third impeachment could have the different outcome the nation so badly needs.

In the wake of this Blue Tsunami, Republican Senators have reason to ask which poses the greater threat to their political survival: the vengeance of Donald Trump after his removal from office, or remaining tied to a deeply unpopular President who has proved electorally lethal to a great many Republican office-holders.

It’s up to the Republicans: impeachment is worth bringing only if enough Republicans are willing to help remove this President – dangerous in so many ways — from office.

There is another constitutional route: the 25th Amendment, which provides for the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to declare that the President is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Consider Trump’s increasingly bizarre behavior– like the craziness of throwing a fit over not being granted the Nobel Peace Prize– for the year in which he’d launched a disastrous war of choice; the strange way he campaigned for Republican candidates by rattling on about matters of no interest to the voters he’s supposed to persuade; his continuing to brag and complain about the Reflecting Pool—calling attention to a fiasco that makes him look terrible, when any politically sensible person would want the subject forgotten.

Such behavior is part of a growing body of evidence that seriously calls into question whether Trump remains capable of fulfilling the duties of the presidency.

Here Vice President JD Vance has a special responsibility. He once declared Trump to be “America’s Hitler,” but subsequently became one of his most devoted defenders. Now Vance, together with the Cabinet, has an opportunity to redeem himself by using the Constitution to take the nuclear football away from a President with a tenuous grip on reality.

But so profound is the disgrace with which these Republicans have covered themselves in recent years, that such constructive actions to protect the country would warrant only a reduction of their sentence to political exile.

America needs a thoroughly rehabilitated conservative party. And that will take time.