This summer will mark 10 years since Donald Trump first descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president of the United States.
Now, two months into his second term, it’s becoming painfully clear that many of the people best positioned to push back against his agenda still haven't accepted how much the world has changed.
The latest example came from Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer in "Mad House," an upcoming book from Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater of The New York Times, which revealed a 2023 exchange in which he said Trump was an aberration.
“Here’s my hope … after this election, when the Republican Party expels the turd of Donald Trump, it will go back to being the old Republican Party," he said, according to the book.
There are a lot of things wrong with this quote other than its needlessly vivid imagery.
I remember the “old” Republican Party well. I was its chairman in 2009 shortly after the transformative victory of President Barack Obama and Democratic dominance in both chambers of Congress. The late Sen. John McCain had been the party’s nominee in 2008 and then-Gov. Mitt Romney would be its nominee in the next cycle.
These former figureheads of the party are now considered by Trump’s acolytes as RINOs, Republicans in Name Only. MAGA Republicans fantasize about McCain roasting in hell. Conservative heavy-hitters like Matt Schlapp say Romney’s physical safety would be jeopardized if he so much as attended the Conservative Political Action Conference.
The "old" Republican Party is gone. It sold its soul to Trump in return for two presidencies and three Supreme Court seats.
One by one, the Republicans who stood up to Trump in the beginning have either left politics or capitulated, often in humiliating fashion.
After Trump insulted his wife’s appearance and lied about his father during the 2016 presidential primary, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz could have continued calling Trump out as a “sniveling coward.” Instead, he became one of his sniveling supporters.
When Trump dragged him into a stomach-turning exchange about genital size on a national debate stage, then-Sen. Marco Rubio could have insisted to Republican voters that their rhetoric had to rise above Trump’s brazen behavior. Instead, he now serves as Trump’s Secretary of State.
Trump has shown that he can turn the Republican base against even the most stalwart conservatives.
Some of this is careerism. Trump has shown that he can turn the Republican base against even the most stalwart conservatives, which leaves those who want to remain in elected office with a choice: debase themselves to gain power or stick to their principles and be cast aside like Romney and McCain.
But the truth is Republicans capitulate even when it's not necessary. Far too many of today’s Republicans are unwilling to call out Trump's seedy dealings with Russia, heed warnings about the perils of relying too heavily on tariffs or stand with law enforcement over pro-Trump extremists — all positions that are unpopular with broad swaths of voters.
Another reason the Republican Party I once led is never seeing a revival? Republican voters don’t want to revive it. In fact, MAGA officials repeatedly race to outdo each others’ depravity because they know today’s Republican voters will reward them for it.
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, who once envisioned a Republican Party that carved out space for LGBTQ+ rights, now fundraises on a bizarre obsession with trans people’s bathroom habits.
Far-right Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once considered a fringe conspiracy theorist by people with multiple brain cells, is now one of the party's leading political figures and the top congressional fundraiser in her state.
Even Trump’s most unhinged Cabinet picks were awarded confirmations not despite their lack of experience or support for conspiracy theories, but because of them.
And there’s Trump, whose criminal indictments and even convictions became a cause célèbre and his highest fundraising days of the 2024 campaign.
The old Republican Party is not coming back. Those bridges have been burned by Republicans. The sooner Schumer and those Republicans interested in the re-emergence of traditional republicanism understand this reality, the sooner we move on from Trumpism. But sitting back and waiting for the GOP to "expel" Trump won't change a thing.
For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders-Townsend, watch “The Weekend” every Saturday and Sunday at 8 a.m. ET on MSNBC.
