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Paul Krugman recently wrote in a NYT piece, “The results of this year’s election, with a solid Biden win but Republicans doing well down-ballot, tells us that American voters don’t fully understand what the modern G.O.P. is really about.”

I like Paul Krugman, and he’s a lot smarter than I am, but I think his statement gets it wrong. Rather than the election showing that too many Americans still don’t understand what the modern G.O.P is really about, it showed just the opposite, that they understand it very well.

That’s why they voted for Trump and Republicans down-ballot. A Monmouth poll taken right after the election found that 94% of Republicans voted for Trump. Only 6% didn’t. It also found that 77% of them agree with Trump that he lost because the election was rigged.

Republicans don’t suffer from confusion. They suffer from a delusional view of reality. They see a world that doesn’t exist and never did, but they want the whole country to believe it is real just like they do. 

Most of us, and certainly the news media, focus attention on Donald Trump when we should be focusing on the Republicans we have labeled as his base. In other words, we are seeing things backwards. They are his base only because he does what they want him to do. They control him, not the other way around. 

What is more, Trump’s base is the Republican Party. Too many of us are missing this fact because of who Republicans used to be. They once were reasonable and sensible enough to reject an unfit and incompetent man-child like Trump to be their party’s leader, but somehow progressives skipped from that time to now, missing the point at which the Tea Party radicals became the Republican Party and pushed genuine conservatives out completely.

These new Republican voters are the ones who chose Donald Trump to be their standard-bearer. Cowardly Republicans in Congress are not afraid of Trump. They are afraid of these Republican voters. They have the power, not Trump.  

Stated another way, Trumpism existed before the news media gave it Trump’s name. They were anti-government before Trump entered politics, wanting, in their words, to get [the government] down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” (Grover Norquist).

Trump wanted to be their man in 2016 because he saw a chance to have power like he had never had and to make a lot of money in the process. He wasn’t interested in policy matters so he told them what they wanted to hear, that he would “drain the swamp” in Washington, which they took to mean he would mess up the works of government and render it impotent.

Once he got in office he set about doing just that by bucking the system and throwing a wrench in the wheels of government via refusing to follow protocol and customs. Most of all, he set about eroding public confidence in the government itself.  

Republicans didn’t mind if Trump brought corruption into his administration as long as he handicapped the government in the ways they wanted. As it turned out, they got better than they expected. The “swamp” didn’t have to be drained to break the government after all. Trump’s own ineptitude, greed, indecency, and egoism accomplished the same goal. 

It was a perfect union. The majority of Republicans who hate the federal government chose to give Trump the ego trip of a lifetime in exchange for his being willing to do everything he could to damage the institutions of government that make us the democracy we are.

This is why 77% of them are not upset at his current attacks on the election. He is doing precisely what they want him to do. If he can de-legitimize the Biden/Harris administration, that will further limit the functioning of all areas of government.  

It doesn’t matter how extreme he becomes or how low he goes, they are more extreme and lower still.  Otherwise, 94% of them wouldn’t have wanted him to have a second term and 77% of them wouldn’t be applauding his effort to stage a coup, the first in American history, as former Republican Steve Schmidt rightly describes it.

The only light in this Republican darkness is the 17% who say they accept the outcome of the election as legitimate. Not much to work with there, but at least they are not willing to say Joe Biden is a fraudulent president. I guess that’s something.

But those all in with Trump become more unhinged by the day along with him. The newly pardoned traitor to his country, Michael Flynn, just committed treason for a second time when he called on Trump to declare Marshall Law and hold “another election” that, of course, he would win. After Trump is gone he should be tried and put in jail again. 

What is going on at the moment would be seen as insane at any other time in our history, but not now. This is the negative impact the Tea Party has had on Republicans, creating what we now call “Trumpism,” but is the same old song they have been singing for years. We’ve heard it before. If they knew history these advocates of Trumpism would know that what they believe in is a return to the pre-Constitution Confederation of States era when the states held all the power. 

Never mind that it took only ten years for our founders to realize the Articles of Confederation were failing with no future for the country under them, but I am sure they don’t know that either.

They will not, of course, succeed in their efforts, but what they are doing does tells us exactly what today’s G.O.P. is about. Let’s not be naive about that.

Let’s also be clear that we are not talking about Republican Party bosses. We are talking about ordinary Republican voters.  They understand exactly what their party has become. Progressives and the news media should not keep focusing on Trump to the point where we allow Trumpism to hide in plain sight and keep doing the damage it (actually, “they”) is doing at the state level as well as the federal. 

I suspect many progressives are reluctant to admit that ordinary Republicans are part of this attack on our democracy because some of them are friends, co-workers, family members, and in my case a financial advisor. 

So what do we do going forward? 

Besides outvoting them as we hope will happen in the Georgia Senate run-off elections, we can call them out. This is more powerful and influential than many might think.

By refusing to let their comments, FB posting, tweets, emails, and other social media communications pass without a rebuttal we let them know their words matter to the rest of us, that we are paying attention and are more than willing to debate the unfounded and often outrageous claims they usually make.  

The politicization of the pandemic is a case in point. The facts about what is happening are easily accessible and we should be ready to challenge anyone who claims they have a right not to wear a mask or practice social distancing. It is both absurd and childish and both can be quickly proven. 

The facts are also easily available when it comes to Trump’s claims of voter fraud and a rigged election. It is not too much to ask of those of us who care about our country to defend it against all foreign AND domestic threats.

We are living in a historic time. If you have read the Federalist Papers you know that a lot of the arguments and propaganda Trumpism is promoting are similar to the ones made by those who were arguing against the ratification of the Constitution. 

They lost then and it now falls to us to ensure that their descendants lose as well.