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There are decent Republican people. There are Republican voters and politicians and writers who promote principles of public decency. But there aren't enough of those individuals to have prevented the Republican Party, as a national institution, from becoming one that welcomes and encourages violence and white-supremacist racism.

The party's pre-Trump history is obviously not spotless. But 10 and 20 years ago the Republican party was usually forced to marginalize and disavow its openly racist, fascist elements, if only for reasons of political expediency. Not so anymore. Consider:

Are there elected Democrats who express dubious views and commit crimes? Yes! But when those individuals get caught, they resign. They become, for example, "disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner." But the idea of disgrace is no longer a relevant concept in a Republican Party whose leaders and voters collectively condone and encourage violence against women, violence against the press, and the expression of white-supremacist views. That's not hyperbole, or a cheap shotit's just reality. Happy Memorial Day!

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The Republicans Are the Party of Thugs and Nazis - Slate Magazine (blog)

This article first appeared on the Dorf on Law site.

Everyone is still trying to figure out what to make of the last two weeks of nonstop news about Donald Trump's unraveling presidency. His trip abroad is generating a bit of news (including his curtsy to a Saudi ruler), but until he inevitably becomes unhinged by the rigors of travel and diplomacy, the rest of the world will have some time to digest the multitude of shocking revelations that led to the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Trump/Russia mess.

The overarching question that has generated serious political commentary is whether and when any Republicans will turn against Trump. Until that happens, he is in no danger of being forced from the White House. Of course, even something short of Trump's removal from office is a win for sanity, both because nonstop drama will derail the Republicans' regressive policy agenda and because it will keep Trump's supporters on the defensive in the 2018 midterm elections.

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Still, it is reasonable to wonder what exactly it will take to shake a few Republicans loose. As it happens, this is a subspecies of a question that I have been asking for the past few years, which is when the Republicans' headlong rush into fact-free extremism will push enough people to oppose them.

In late 2015, for example, I wrote " At This Point, Would Any Republican Ever Leave the Party? " along with three follow-up columns on Dorf on Law ( here, here, and here ). I focused there on whether the Republican Party is still home to any moderates, in a sense of that word that is more meaningful than simply "not quite as far out on the right fringe as the others."

Once Trump emerged as the Republican nominee and then shocked everyone by stumbling into an Electoral College win, the question was whether the supposed leaders of the Republican Party would actively oppose anything that he did. Needless to say, they have instead been cowering in their offices and refusing to criticize their new overlord.

With everything that has recently come to light, however, the question again becomes whether any Republicans will rouse themselves into action, putting true patriotism above party and political careerism. We are seeing some mild stirrings, but it is far too early to have any confidence that anyone will stand up and be counted.

One way to think about this is to look at the specific people whose reputations and track records make them the most obvious candidates to oppose Trump. Unfortunately, the Bush family, Senators John McCain and Susan Collins, and a few others have consistently failed to live up to their hype.

Sen. John McCain (L) (R-AZ) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) (R-SC) at the U.S. Capitol November 14, 2012 in Washington, DC. Win McNamee/Getty

And sure enough, just when McCain made headlines last week by calling the current situation of "Watergate size and scale," he immediately weaseled away from his almost-brave maverickiness.

As CBS News put it : "But in an interview with Fox News's Chris Wallace on 'Fox News Sunday,' McCain appeared to walk back his previous comments, saying he was referring to the administration's managing of the situation, and not the scandal itself." Profiles in courage this is not, at least so far.

Rather than focusing on specific individuals who might ride to the rescue, however, it might make more sense to describe the conditionsboth internal and externalthat would lead a Republican to break with Trump.

In other words, we need to think about a Republican office-holder or grandee who is being confronted with the ongoing embarrassments and evidence of possible crimes and treason by his or her president and who finally says, "No more."

These people, we must remember, are still Republicans, which means that they have not been driven away by the climate change denialism, the dog-whistle racism that became Trump's open bigotry, the efforts to give to the rich and take from the poor, the aggressive attempts to control women's bodies and so on. For most of the party, those are their reasons for being Republicans, after all, rather than reasons to quit.

So, we are asking what the conditions are that would make an extreme conservative possibly turn against Trump, which would possibly lead to setbacks in Republicans' policy and electoral goals.

Although it is true that most Republicans live in the Fox News bubble, it does not appear possible that they are able to remain blissfully unaware of what is going on. Even a congressman from one of the most pro-Trump districts in the country had recently begun to wonder whether "[t]his Trump thing is sustainable."

That particular Republican congressman, it turns out, happens to watch CNN. But most of his constituents do not, so when only one of a series of his town hall meetings had any anti-Trump acrimony, the congressman decided that there was little downside to sticking with Trump.

None of which is surprising, nor is it meaningful for assessing Trump's future. A first-term congressman from rural Kentucky does not hold the key to the impeachment process.

The point is that Republican officeholders cannot escape the news about Trump. Even those who insist on listening only to friendly news sources are confronted by reporters asking about the latest controversies. The vast majority will be unmoved, but their " epistemic closure " is not sufficient to allow them simply to remain ignorant about what is happening.

What really will make the difference? That is, what factors could come together to allow some Republicans to break ranks?

The most obvious possibility is for someone who is nearing the end of the political road to decide to do the right thing. For example, when the Republican leadership needed to find enough Republican votes over the last few years to pass increases in the debt ceiling, they would rely on the handful of retiring House members each term to do the right thing.

This, indeed, is a recurrent theme in literature and cinema, with the grizzled and compromised anti-hero suddenly standing up for what is right. Think about movies with contract killers and other bad guys who want at long last to do something good and decent before they die.

A variation on this theme was Clint Eastwood's film "Gran Torino," where he played what we might call a "casual xenophobe" who learns that he is dying and sacrifices himself to save an immigrant family.

Of course, not everyone who is leaving office is suddenly going to find their integrity. Some are so morally compromised by years of political gymnastics that they simply do not know what integrity means. Others, such as the hyper-partisan Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, are young and almost certainly clinging to delusions of future political greatness. Even so, Chaffetz has shown some mild signs of breaking with Trump before he leaves office next month.

Short of retirement, some politicians might feel some safety in breaking from Trump if their own reelection races are years away. Republican senators who are not up for reelection until 2020 or 2022 would fall into this category, especially that earlier group, because they need to ask themselves whether they want to run for reelection down the ballot from Trump.

Neither of these conditionsbeing near retirement or being far away from facing the votersis sufficient, of course. John McCain won reelection in 2016, after all, and he will either retire in 2022 or run again at age 86. Even so, as noted above, he is at best wobbly right now.

Then there are the people who will run for reelection very soon but are simply scared that backing Trump will be worse for them than abandoning him. That one Kentucky congressman is not in danger, but many in somewhat competitive districts are. For them, the balance is between risking a challenge in their primaries and being stained with the R label in a general election.

Perhaps the most difficult question is how to find Republican officeholders who would be willing to sustain the punishments that would come from turning against Trump. There are all kinds of institutional punishments that can be meted out against turncoats, from losing prime committee assignments to the pettiest matters of being given bad office space and losing parking privileges.

But the more important punishments are external. There is unfortunately a large faction of Trump supporters who will immediately attack anyone who weakens on Trump. Although I do not engage with social media, I am not one to downplay the fear that the Republican targets of these onslaughts must feelespecially because such attacks sometimes include death threats.

In short, unless some huge new revelation turns this into a full-on run for the exits by Republicans, Trump will go down only when there are enough Republicans in the House and Senate who in one way or another do not care about their political futures and are willing to deal with the professional and personal harm that they will risk to themselves and their families.

On the other hand, politicians are often looking for a way to build a legacy. People today do not remember the vast majority of Republicans who stuck with Richard Nixon to the bitter end, but newspapers have recently been filled with Howard Baker's name, recounting his history-turning role in the Watergate hearings.

Again, most Republicans seem perfectly happy to be on the wrong side of history when it comes to voting rights, climate change, inequality, women's rights, same-sex marriage (although that has notably shifted) and so on. They also seem largely unworried by Trump's manifest unfitness for the presidency.

But some number of them could wake up one day soon and say: "Some things are too big to ignore. I love my country and the Constitution. When my story is told, I want to be remembered as a patriot."

Will there be enough Republicans who finally decide that the country must be saved?

Neil H. Buchanan is an economist and legal scholar and a professor of law at George Washington University. He teaches tax law, tax policy, contracts, and law and economics. His research addresses the long-term tax and spending patterns of the federal government, focusing on budget deficits, the national debt, health care costs and Social Security.

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Neil Buchanan: What Will It Take for Republicans To Dump Trump? - Newsweek

President Trump has had more-scandalous weeks. He has had weeks with more bombshell bad-news stories. But no week has matched this one in revealing the moral and intellectual rot at the center of the GOP. Pandemic intellectual dishonesty and celebration of uncivilized conduct now permeate the party and its support in the conservative ecosystem. Consider what we saw and learned this week:

This is the state of the GOP a refuge for intellectual frauds and bullies, for mean-spirited hypocrites who preach personal responsibility yet excuse the inexcusable.

President Trump appeared to push past Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic at a NATO event in Brussels on May 25. (Reuters)

Conventional wisdom says that Trump executed a hostile takeover of the GOP. What we have seen this week suggests a friendly merger has taken place. Talk radio hosts have been spouting misogyny and anti-immigrant hysteria for years; Trump is their ideal leader, not merely a flawed vehicle for their views. Fox News has been dabbling in conspiracy theories (e.g. birtherism, climate-change denial) for decades; now Republicans practice intellectual nihilism. Nearly every point of criticism raised against the left softness on foreign aggressors, irresponsible budgeting, identity politics, executive overreach, contempt for the rule of law, infantilizing voters has become a defining feature of the right.

Anti-Trump Republicans have debated whether the GOP can be reformed or must be abandoned. Where would one even begin to reform a party such as this and who would lead such an effort? (Sorry, but Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska cannot themselves run a national party.) It would take a clean sweep of not merely officeholders but also right-wing media outlets to recover anything approaching the intellectual rigor and moral decency conservatives used to cherish.

The country needs two parties and benefits from the ideas associated with classical liberalism (small l) the rule of law (over the law of the jungle), respect for the dignity of every individual, prosperity-creating free markets (including trade), values-based foreign policy. The Republican Party no longer embodies those ideals; it undermines them in words and in deeds. It now advances ideas and celebrates behavior antithetical to democracy and simple human decency. Center-right Americans, we have become convinced, must look elsewhere for a political home.

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A week that reveals how rotten today's Republican Party is - Washington Post (blog)

Beyond that, there's not much we actually know -- given that it's only 48 hours since the Gianforte choke-slam on Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs took place.

It remains to be seen how -- and whether -- Republican views on Gianforte change. There's no question that some Gianforte voters actually backed him because of the confrontation. And that the public's attention span is very, very short -- and we tend to think we will never forget things that we forget the following day.

Those two factors are what House Republicans are banking on. That the audio of Gianforte slamming Jacobs to the ground -- and even the possibility that he will be convicted of a misdemeanor -- will recede in peoples' memory as long as the Montana Republican keeps his mouth shut.

Source: GOP candidate 'body slammed' reporter 01:47

They're probably right. Interest in the race is already fading due to the fact that the frontrunner, Gianforte, won. And Montana is out of the way enough -- in terms of the national conversation -- that without a major next development, it won't likely stay in the national news.

For Democrats, the path forward is also uncertain. A victory in Montana would have been evidence of the anti-Trump movement Democrats insist is sweeping the country. And, given that the national party and its aligned super PACs spent millions on the race, they clearly believed it was a winnable proposition. (The Montana secretary of state's office also says that as a federally elected official, Gianforte can't be recalled.)

Sadly, the fact that Gianforte's assault happened on a reporter also makes it more likely to disappear as a major issue since reporters are about as popular as foot fungus. (Sidebar: For people who cheered Gianforte's slam of Jacobs, ask yourself this: Do you think it's a good thing societally for a reporter to get beaten up for doing his job? How about one human treating another one that way?)

Gianforte will be seated. And, at the moment, it's hard to see Republicans even considering forcing him to resign (or even consider it). The likeliest outcome is that Gianforte will come to Washington and then recede into the backbenches of Congress -- never to be heard from again. And his conduct will have no real-world consequences.

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Greg Gianforte won. Now what do Republicans do? - CNN

Trumps negative media coverage is being driven not by Democrats but by law-enforcement sources and pissed-off Republicans.

CNN analysts discuss President Donald Trumps comments on the necessity for the US Civil War. (Screengrab / CNN)

Last week, when CNN reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had left a couple of meetings with Russian officials off his application for a security clearance, Representative Jeff Duncan (R-SC) falsely claimed that the broadcaster had later retracted the story. In a Facebook post, Duncan, who is not known for having the keenest intellect on Capitol Hill, wrote, The media was never this critical to President Obama, the recent Harvard study proves that the media has applied a completely different standard to President Trump.

Duncan, like many on the right, sees a recent study of the mainstream coverage of Trumps first 100 days in office released by Harvards Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy as solid proof that the media treat Trump unfairly. It looked at news reports in the print editions of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, the main newscasts of CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC, and three European news outlets, and found that 80 percent of Trumps coverage by those outlets was negativesignificantly higher than the shares for Barack Obama (41 percent negative), George W. Bush (57 percent), and Bill Clinton (60 percent) at this point in their presidencies. Conservative publications greeted the report with headlines like Harvard Study Confirms Media Bias Against Trump and Harvard Report: There Is A Huge Anti-Trump Bias In Corporate Media.

The obvious response is that the vast majority of stories about famine, natural disasters, and genital warts are negative, and that doesnt imply a bias on the part of those writing them. Trumps young presidency has been a train wreck, his White House has been mired in largely self-inflicted scandals, and his legislative agenda has so far gotten nowhere in Congress. And Trump, unlike his predecessors, has a penchant for impulsively tweeting dubious claims and inflammatory nonsense. The study also found that the sheer volume of Trump coveragehe was the subject of four of every 10 news stories in the outlets studieddwarfs that of previous administrations.

But thats not the real story. The real story is that Trumps negative coverage is being driven not by liberals or Democrats but by law-enforcement sources and pissed-off Republicans.

Its important to understand the studys methodology. According to its author, Harvard scholar Thomas Patterson, Tone is judged from the perspective of the actor, the actor being, in this case, Donald Trump. A story is coded as negative when the actor is criticized directlyfor example when Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told a reporter, Eleven weeks into his administration, we have seen nothing from President Trump on infrastructure, on trade, or on any other serious job-creating initiativeor when an event, trend, or development reflects unfavorably on the actor. So negative stories are either stories that quote someone griping about Trump, or stories about developments that cast a negative light on his performance.

And heres a key point, as it relates to that first category: Republican voices, wrote Patterson, accounted for 80 percent of what newsmakers said about the Trump presidency, compared to only 6 percent for Democrats and 3 percent for those involved in anti-Trump protests. So the coverage has not featured a bunch of liberals complaining about TrumpDemocrats and those engaged with the anti-Trump resistance were few and far between. The fact that Trump has received more negative coverage than his predecessor is hardly surprising, the report says. The early days of his presidency have been marked by far more missteps and miss-hits, often self-inflicted, than any presidency in memory, perhaps ever.

Stories about events that reflect poorly on the White House have in large part been driven by leaks (a fact that infuriates Trump and his supporters). We cant know the ideological breakdown of the people speaking to reporters anonymously, but we do know that Trumps own staffpeople close to himhave been the source of a number of negative stories, and we know, thanks to White House leaks, that Trumps staff often leaks information to the press because, as the very conservative Erick Erickson reported, sometimes the president will not take advice. Sometimes the president treats suggestions as criticism. More often than not, the president is vastly more interested in what the media says about him than what his advisers in his employ say to him. According to Erickson, who personally knows an ardent Trump supporter in Trumps orbit who was the source of one such leak, White House staff have ample incentive to leak to the press when they believe the president needs to pay attention or be admonished. Just think for a moment how often youve read a story in which an anonymous source criticizing the president is identified as a current or former supporter or adviser or donor.

THE STAKES ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER. GET THE NATION IN YOUR INBOX.

Law-enforcement and intelligence agencies have been the other big source of leaks. Theyre not all right-wingers, of course, and their motives for leaking include, depending on how you look at it, either revenge for Trumps many assaults on the intelligence community, or a principled defense of institutions they see as vital to our national security. Neither of those things represents ideological bias.

One might certainly argue that many of the Republicans who dominate the public discourse about Trump were hostile towards his presidency from the beginning. Prominent #NeverTrump conservatives like Ana Navarro, Stuart Stevens, David Frum are easy to find on cable TV and social media. But when a reporter doing her best to cover the president fairly sees similar criticisms coming from both the left and the right, when her story reflects those views, its not a matter of bias. Thats how he said-she said journalism, for all its obvious flaws, has always worked.

Ironically, the Shorenstein study did find significant bias at one media outlet: Fox News was a lone outlier in that almost half of its Trump coverage was positive. Looking back at 100 days marked by chaos and failure, its hard to imagine what a truly fair and balanced news outlet possibly could have covered in order to run so many positive segments.

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Conservatives Complain That Republicans Have a Liberal Bias - The Nation.