Logical Cowardice

 We now have a couple dozen, give or take, GOP Attorneys General and more than a hundred Republican members of the House of Representatives supporting this b.s. lawsuit by Texas trying to overturn the results of four states so that Trump can stay around.  Is this irrational?  No, it is not.  It is wrong, it is craven, but it makes sense.  How so?

First, let's go back to 2016.  Remember when Trump was running for office and few of the dozen or so other competitors for the nomination refused to attack him head on?  They were not afraid, necessarily, of Trump as a sharp debater.  They were afraid of alienating a key part of his base--the extreme wing of the Republican Party.  Cruz and Rubio were particularly craven.  Their miscalculation, of course, was that they thought they could win enough of the rest of the GOP to offset Trump's strong support among the extremists.  Turns out the party was a wee bit more extreme, at least those turning out.

Now?  Republicans may or may not fear angry tweets from Trump, but they don't really have to worry about retaliation via the normal means of a President changing priorities, shifting resources, etc, because, well, he is only going to be in office for 40 or so more days.  But what these Republicans do fear is alienating the Trumpists within the GOP.  Due to Fox, Sinclair, QAnon, and other malignant forces, the ratio of Trumpists in the party have increased.  But even if they were only 10% of the party, losing that hunk in a general election in many districts and most states would be enough to turn elections.  

So, the fear of these potential voters is real and quite rational.  They may vote for a third party (if Trump blesses one) or not show up at the polls if they are dissatisfied.  Or they may primary those GOP who are not sufficiently loyal to Trump.  

But what of the national interest?  What about the preservation of institutions and of democracy?  Well, those concerns would matter if these folks were "Conservatives" but they are not.  They are reactionaries and opportunists.  Plus there is the collective action problem--that the incentives to contribute a bit to a cooperative effort with few direct benefits to oneself are outweighed by the temptations to defect, to free ride on the democracy that others are providing.  

Yep, it is rational and awful.  And we should not be surprised by this, given what the GOP went along with for the past four years and what they did to the Obama Administration when it was trying to deal with one of the worst economic crises of our time. This is the party of McConnell, it is the party of Gingrich.  It is not just the party of Trump--it has been rotten for some time.  But now it is out of the control of the party establishment, in the hands of Trump.  

And that is not going to end on January 20th.