Lindsey Graham put on his blusterin' shoes yesterday, and said, yet again, that Trump can't fire Mueller, or, you know, he might get mad and do sumfin'. Other Republicans, like Rubio, have made a few whimpers about McCabe, but...
They're full of shit. Donald Trump has absolute control of the Republican Party. Remember Trump's history with Graham and Rubio. Just to be a turd, Trump publicly released Lindsey Graham's personal cell phone number. At least it led to this...
Sorry, Lindsey, but John's still not impressed.
Then, there's Rubio. You know, "Little Marco."
They both consistently came crawling back to Donald, and backed him on everything when it counted. Have they ever actually challenged him on anything? Graham called Trump a kook on the campaign trail when he was still nominally a contender for the nomination, and then claimed that nobody had any right to challenge Trump's sanity. Rubio was similarly brought to heel.
Or, there's Ted Cruz. Trump called his wife ugly and accused his father of participating in the Kennedy assassination. Has Cruz stood up to Trump on anything? Of course not.
But what about Bob Corker? He stood up to Trump, right?
Until he didn't. After months of telling everyone he'd vote no on the tax bill, McConnell bought him off, and he went from telling everyone that Trump was debasing the nation to cozying up to Donny.
Credibility. Thomas Schelling again. Your threats are not credible if carrying out the threat will hurt you. You can pull it off in one of a couple of ways: convince people that you aren't rational, or... just fucking do it once in a while to establish a pattern and reputation.
Nobody in the GOP has a pattern of carrying out threats against Donald Trump, and Trump knows it. Lindsey Graham's words are empty. What will Graham do if Trump fires Mueller?
Absolutely nothing. The same thing every other Republican in the House and Senate will do. That includes Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, John McCain, Susan Collins and everyone else who has ever postured towards independence.
So we return to the concept of credibility. What could they do to Trump? Impeach him for obstruction of justice. They won't, because the entire party will declare Mueller to be a Democratic Party operative, and the entire investigation to be a fake news witch hunt, but they could impeach him.
Why won't they? What is the balance of considerations? Trump is doing damage to the country-- to our basic norms of governance. The corruption in this administration is beyond anything this country has ever seen, and that includes the Harding administration. I am pretty inured to corruption, and if I am disgusted...
Leaving Trump in office does serious damage. To everyone.
Removing Trump does harm to the Republican Party in the short term, creating a replay of 1974 and 1976, with the aftermath of Watergate.
From the Republican perspective, whether you see removing Trump from office as a net loss depends on your balance of considerations. If you weigh your party's short-term electoral fortunes more heavily than the country, then you would see it is harmful to your own interests to impeach Trump, and you would have no credible threat to remove Trump. It would follow that Trump could fire Mueller without consequence.
And there it is.
The basic mechanics of a two-party system, which is what you get with a plurality rule electoral system (see Maurice Duverger) is that you cannot threaten your own party's president unless you are willing to hand control to the other party. If you weigh your own party's control so heavily that nothing outweighs that, then no level of corruption is too high for you to tolerate.
That describes the Republican Party right now. The entire party. They will tolerate any level of corruption because the alternative, to them, is unthinkable. Democrats in power. If you define the opposing party as the greatest evil imaginable, then you will tolerate any other evil within your own party because any other evil is, by definition, lesser.
Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster's "negative partisanship" strikes again, although whether or not this would hold for Democrats... not everything is symmetric.
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