The Various Types of Cowardice Within the GOP

***This was a story that I originally wrote for Paste Magazine that never made it up due to the mass shooting in Orlando and Donald Trump shoveling more offensive bullshit out of his asshole he calls a mouth that made this post become instantly outdated***

I’m old enough to remember a time when #NeverTrump had real legs, but before you could say “Donald Trump’s Lego man sized hands,” roughly eight in ten Republicans somehow accepted the inevitable even though many openly disagreed with the inevitable, and the pillars of Republican opposition began to collapse one by one.

From around the time Donald Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee, Republicans in elected office have divided into one of two categories: those who either rushed to support him (call them the Christies), or those trying to lay the groundwork to endorse him later (we’ll name them the Ryans).

Christies are divided into one of two camps: people who actually eat up Trump’s white nationalist nonsense, and those who will gladly swim upstream through a river of shit to stay relevant in Washington D.C.. Because he ran the state with both eyes fixed squarely on the White House, Chris Christie is more despised in New Jersey than people who don’t like Bruce Springsteen, and he falls into the latter category. Hardliners like Jeff Sessions were always going to back the looniest legitimate candidate, and Trump out-crazied a very deep bench of batshit to win his title this year.

Ryans are savvier than Christies. Christies are focused on the short term; trying to take advantage of the current moment, mistaking it for a movement. Ryans understand that movements take longer to form, and that there is an older, larger, diametrically opposite force beginning to blossom, all set into motion not coincidentally right around the time The Greatest of All Time changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

The Ryans accept reality and have stalled for time. They are doing this for one of three reasons:

1. They are actually going through an earnest internal conflict, attempting to resolve what they were taught with what they have learned.

2. They’re gambling that Donald Trump will quickly make himself completely toxic and it won’t make sense for any Republican to endorse him.

3. They don’t want to piss off their voters and/or donors and don’t know what to do. (PSST! This is the reason!)

No matter their rationale for holding off on endorsing Trump, most Republicans seem to have coalesced around the idea that nearly anyone is better than Hillary Clinton. If not for Trump, Hillary would be the most despised general election candidate in recorded history. Democrats have their own issues with her, as this website has certainly detailed, but Republicans view her with the same contempt people reserve for their mortal enemy or their cable company.

For any Republican to say they are voting for Hillary is to open up a torrent of vile nonsense. If you don’t believe me, check out Tom Nichols’ Twitter mentions the next time he brings up Donald Trump. Nichols used to work for the federal government, is currently a professor at the Naval War College and The Harvard Extension School, a writer for The Federalist, a five time Jeopardy! Champion, and a Republican with a capital R. He shares that same animosity towards the Democratic nominee, yet he still will vote for her so long as the only other choice is a conman. To the majority of Republicans who view politics as a sport where one team wins and the other loses, this position is simply unfathomable. Many conservative members of Congress even agree that Donald Trump has always held liberal views, but the fact that he has an R next to his name supersedes any other facet of reality. It’s caveman logic.

A new breed of Republican emerged this week, as we saw our first deserters. Lindsey Graham, the forever hypocrite, revoked his endorsement because he decided that Trump’s racism bothers him again. Mark Kirk, running for reelection in Illinois this fall, effectively punted on the question and said he will vote for former General David Petreaus, who is not running for President. We could poke fun at the near-perfect irony of Kirk dismissing a womanizing blowhard and a former Secretary of State under federal investigation in favor of a General who disclosed state secrets of the highest order to his mistress, but politically speaking, no choice at all is probably the right move for Republicans in blue states.

Jeff Flake and many other “moderate” Republicans have tried to split the difference with bullshit statements not worth the toilet paper they’re printed on, like “I hope to be able to support the nominee. I certainly can’t right now.”

What the hell do these people think is going to happen? Donald Trump could walk into your home and kick you in the nuts in front of your children, and he’d ask you to apologize for soiling his shoe before demanding that you summon your shoe shiner. None of these statements are being walked back, more are coming, and they’re not being forgotten, just ask Hillary’s PAC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QUYQUd0Qh8

The Ryans are saying that there is a scenario where they can support that nominee. One who refuses to apologize for anything he has ever said, even when he publicly contradicts himself while doing so. He denied it was him on the phone to every cable news show, yet twenty years prior, he admitted that the John Miller/John Barron calls to PR people were made by him and were a “joke gone bad.” The message from the Ryans is crystal clear: so long as Trump toes the party line and tones it down, everything he has said and done can still make him Presidential and therefore, representative of the greater Republican Party.

Given Trump’s buffoonery, this reasoning can be easily led to some disturbing ends. Who wouldn’t the Republicans vote for over Hillary Clinton?

Bill Clinton? Kanye West? Walter White? The Joker? George Zimmerman?

Seriously, tell me where the line is, because Republicans have yet to draw one against a man who has incited violence at his rallies, makes his followers demonstrate a show of support to him (like every single dictator and despot in history has), and literally defined racism for the entire country the day after the Speaker of the House endorsed him, as he tried to use the media to intimidate an American-born judge presiding over a Trump University fraud case; a “university” that isn’t even legally classified as a university.

In early May, Paul Ryan claimed he “was not ready” to support Trump. A month later, he wrote an op-ed stating that he agreed with the plurality of voters who think that we should hand control of the FBI, CIA, DOJ, etc…over to this Ponzi scheme wearing a man’s clothes. As unpalatable as Hillary may be, her evils exist within the traditional bounds of politics. This election is not defined by planning for the future, but by staving off a guaranteed catastrophe and ensuring that there will still be a future to plan for. We need more Nichols in this world, and far less Christies and Ryans.