Yesterday, the Freedom Caucus introduced articles of impeachment for Rod Rosenstein. Why? Partly, they're nuts. Remember that these are the people who drove John Boehner from office for being too good at his job. What is really going on here, though, is that the group of Republicans most under Trump's spell is the House Freedom Caucus, so the group most committed to his bullshit about the Mueller investigation being a "witch hunt" is the group that Boehner called "knuckleheads." Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, those guys. Oh, and my favorite, Louie Gohmert. Love that guy! Anyway, these guys want Rosenstein gone so that Mueller's ass gets canned.
There is nobody in the Republican Party more fully committed to Trump's defense, and to the loony conspiracy theories that Trump has spouted to get the party circling the wagons, than the Freedom Caucus. Let's examine that, because this tells us something important about the nature of the party.
The Freedom Caucus, versus Mitch McConnell. Think about that distinction. Mitch McConnell cares about the power of the Republican Party. He will do whatever it takes to maintain that power. The Freedom Caucus? This is supposed to be the hardcore ideologues-- the ones most committed to conservative principles.
Why do they love Trump so much? Keep in mind that Trump just keeps on raising taxes. Those tariffs he just said are so great? Those are taxes. On Americans. That's how tariffs work. You force American consumers (or businesses, for producer goods or intermediate goods) to pay taxes on anything imported in order to disincentivize buying foreign goods, but those are taxes.* This is the party that hates taxes more than they hate nazis. Very fine people indeed, right, Donny-boy?
So, why do they love tax-raisin' Donny so much? He is impure. Unclean. In as many senses of those words as there are. The answer is one of the following three things: either there is some other policy that they take to be more important (e.g. victory with Supreme Court appointments), they're too stupid to understand what tariffs actually are (plausible, given how stupid Freedom Caucus members are), or extreme conservatism, and the Republican Party in general, isn't about ideological purity so much as antipathy to Democrats and the groups who make up that party. Given the role of racial resentment in the 2016 election, the nature of immigration politics right now, and Trump's political rise... I'm kinda goin' with door number 3 here, but even door number 1 would be excessive tolerance for impurity, and challenge the Grossman & Hopkins model.
Look. White identity politics is group politics. It isn't about ideological purity or principle or any of that. The Freedom Caucus is Trump's most staunch base on the House. They love him. They love him, despite the fact that he raises taxes because, above all else, he antagonizes those they hate. Democrats, and minorities. As Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster have observed, partisanship is now largely about "negative partisanship," meaning antipathy towards the opposing party rather than positive affect towards one's own party. Donald Trump spews hate at a volume and intensity that no politician has since the days of the segregationist south, and it is heroin to a group of addicts who have been taking methadone for decades, craving the high of their drug of old. They don't care that he raises taxes. They don't care that he subordinates the country to Vladimir Putin. They don't care about any of that. As long as he spews hate at Democrats, the media, and most of all, minorities, the Freedom Caucus will love him. They're prayin' to their junkiemaker.
And they will do anything to defend him. That's not an ideological movement seeking purity. That's group identity politics. The Freedom Caucus wants Rod Rosenstein's head, not because there is any conservative principle at stake, but to defend the most effectively aggressive warrior for white identity politics this country has seen in decades.
I really don't like having to write this kind of stuff. I'm a numbers guy. I like being the contrarian who tells you that your intuition is wrong, here's some cool research to show you the basic stability and sensibility of the political system, and so forth. Like I've been saying, though, the Trump era upends everything. This is nuts.
*There will be a post soon about Trump blinking on his trade war with the EU.
