The American Conservative Mind: The Banality Of Submission— Power Worshippers Anonymous

Oh, Yeah... And The Obedient Soul And Reflexive Servant

We were critical of the Any-Blue-Will-Do crowd this morning. You know what’s worse? Hard core MAGAts; that’s as low as you can go, even in a feeble democracy. Annie Karni had an interesting NY Times essay Thursday, For These Trump Voters, a Rubber-Stamp Congress Is a Key Demand. “[A]ccording to Trump voters,” she wrote, “the role of the legislative branch is to rubber-stamp the president’s agenda— and they don’t appreciate Republicans who deviate from the party line. In two recent focus groups that quizzed older Trump voters from across the country about their views of Congress and congressional leaders, participants consistently praised lawmakers who displayed ‘loyalty’ to President Trump and disparaged those whom they viewed as failing to fall in line behind him. They expressed as much disdain for members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus as they did for the more moderate senators they refer to as RINOs… including Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. And they reserved their purest aversion for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the solidly conservative former longtime party leader, whom they described alternately as an ‘obstructionist’ to Trump’s agenda, a ‘snake in the grass’ and a ‘bowl of Jell-O’ with no spine.”

While many Democrats admire independence in their Members of Congress, MAGAts have nothing but disdain for it. “Lockstep” is a disparagement among Democratic voters and a compliment among the MAGAts who reserve their purest adoration for obedient Trumpists who never break ranks. That’s the MAGA mindset in a nutshell: blind loyalty to a strongman, not to a set of policies, not to a coherent ideology, and certainly not to democratic institutions. It’s about one man, one brand. one id. Trump never felt he needed a Congress with ideas. All he ever wanted was a cheering squad in suits. The MAGA voter expects no deliberation, no negotiation, no balance of powers— just blind obedience.

Compare that to Democratic voters, even the "Any Blue Will Do" faction we criticized earlier. Their allegiance is, sometimes frustratingly, still to process— to the idea that a functioning government should deliberate, legislate and even (gasp!) disagree internally. That’s one of the reasons they often tear each other apart in primaries. There’s no singular figure who commands lockstep loyalty across the base. Biden didn’t have a cult; he had a tenuous coalition— an often-fractious, reluctant, ideologically diverse coalition. Kamala didn’t even have that, just an identity politics hodgepodge held together by antipathy to Trump.

That’s the big psychological and political gap: MAGAts view disagreement as betrayal. Democratic voters often view disagreement as a virtue— or at least a sign of independent minds. It's why you found Biden supporters openly criticizing him over Gaza, over the border, over climate. They still showed up to vote against Trump, but they did so while holding their noses, gritting their teeth, and often organizing protests at the same time. MAGA voters, by contrast, don’t protest Trump’s actions; they cosplay as revolutionaries while defending his every abuse of power.

This, of course has consequences. It explains why Republicans fear their base, while Democrats argue with theirs. GOP leaders get punished for independent thought; Democrats get punished for not delivering utopia fast enough. One side is terrified of its voters; the other is endlessly trying to please a restless and skeptical electorate. It's worth asking yourself which dynamic is healthier for democracy? Which one is more compatible with the checks and balances enshrined in our system?

Back to Karni, she wrote that the MAGAts’ “perspectives offered a striking contrast to the reception that many Republican lawmakers have confronted at raucous town halls throughout the country in recent months. The lawmakers have been grilled and booed by constituents at these events for supporting Trump’s policies on tariffs, immigration and, most recently, the sprawling domestic policy bill that the GOP pushed through the House last week. ‘For loyal Trump voters, they’re loving what they see as him doing something and don’t want congressional Republicans getting in the way of his agenda,’ said Sarah Longwell, the anti-Trump Republican strategist who conducted the focus groups. ‘And members of Congress have gotten that message loud and clear.’ These voters represent only a piece of the electorate that Republicans must court in the run-up to midterm congressional elections in which their governing trifecta is on the line. Since Trump took office, GOP lawmakers have struggled to defend his executive actions, his efforts to dismantle the federal bureaucracy and unilaterally defund government programs, and to explain to their constituents why they are not doing more to challenge him.”

Since the beginning of this Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson, whose too-slim majority in the House leaves him little latitude to maneuver, has positioned himself less as the leader of the legislative branch and more as a junior partner to Trump.

That stance is exactly what these voters… said they liked about him.

… Allen K. from Arizona praised his congressman, Representative Juan Ciscomani, for never making any waves.

“Whatever Trump does, he’ll say,” he said of Ciscomani, describing that as a positive.

… Many of the participants in the focus groups had only vague impressions of their own representatives, a reminder that to many voters, Congress remains a faceless institution of 535 mostly anonymous lawmakers about whom they don’t have particularly strong feelings. That could help explain why most appeared to judge their elected officials almost exclusively according to how deferential they were to Trump, about whom they expressed potent— and extremely positive— sentiments.

Asked for his opinions on Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Steve C., a voter from Michigan, said: “I don’t have an opinion on anyone specifically.”