Before the election, I wrote a post speculating on whether, this time around, the Mugwumps might win.
We are about to find out.
An article of impeachment against the 45th President of the United States will be presented to the Senate, and there will be a trial in February.
The two factions of the Republican Party—the white nationalists/45 loyalists and the coalition of neoconservative/moral conservative politicos coalescing around the aims of The Lincoln Project—will be squaring off in that impeachment trial. That latter group would be our modern-day Mugwumps, finally unwilling to sign off on the legal and moral corruption of their party’s candidate for President and even going so far as endorsing the other candidate. Of course it’s not a perfect analogy; the OG Mugwumps were not objecting to an incumbent candidate, while today’s Mugwumps crossed that Rubicon.
Library of Congress
Steve Schmidt, one of the leaders of The Lincoln Project, recently explained to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that he expects the Republican party to split much as the Whig party split in 1854—an irony indeed, because that was the split that gave us the Republican party in the first place. If he’s right, my question is moot: there will be no more Republican party to fight over. We would get two new parties, both trying to occupy the conservative lane in American politics: one a white supremacist/white ethnonationalist party, and one a conservative plutocratic party.
Another possible scenario is this: the Mugwumps are officially and finally driven out of the Republican Party, don’t form their own party, and simply become the most conservative of Democrats. This too would be an ironic historical development, since many of today’s Republican ideas derive from the anti-federalism of the conservative (and white supremacist) southern Democrats of yore. But the Republicans disavowing today’s party are also disavowing the white supremacy manifest in today’s party. Can they cling to “fiscal conservatism” divorced of white supremacy? Fiscal conservatism without white supremacy might be a little bit like a dance-partner missing a skeleton, though. It doesn’t hold up, and you can’t hold it up. And if the modern-day Mugwumps are intentional about distinguishing themselves from the race-rooted populism of 45 and his followers, then they may find themselves tacking toward something like Eisenhower Republicanism or Rockefeller Republicanism, though—amazingly—that would mean quite the leftward lurch.
If the Republican party disintegrates, will we see a “return” to “the liberal consensus”? (Was there ever a liberal consensus?) Who knows. But we could do worse than a real Infrastructure Week (or year) and massive federal funding for education, nutrition, childcare, and other necessaries of a flourishing economy in the Information Age.
But there’s another scenario at play here, and this is where the stakes are highest for the Mugwumps: in the fight over “the soul of the Republican party,” what if the Mugwumps win? What if there are 67 votes for impeachment, what if there is a will in Congress to expel a few members who egged on the crowd on January 6 or who gave some kind of aid or assistance or information to those among the crowd who had planned out the kidnapping and possible execution of lawmakers. What if, in the wake of January 6, state and local Republican party rank and file works to isolate the “sedition caucus” in their own midst. What if the Mugwumps win control of the GOP and get to keep the name if they want it?
In that scenario, do the expelled fascists become a growing movement, or do they become a shrinking fringe?
I can’t make predictions.
But it seems to me that we are in the middle of one of those momentous realignments in American politics. I hope we all come out the other side more willing and ready to work for a new birth of freedom.
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