When the Cult Goes South

Every cult leader starts out as charismatic and compelling. But when he decompensates as Trump is now, the followers are screwed

It’s hard to think of a time when a president and a party worked as hard as Donald Trump and Republicans are now to lose an election. “That’s because they’re idiots,” you might say, and for many of them that’s true. But even stupid politicians have an instinct for self-preservation, one that is being violated every day as they seem to look for new ways to alienate the voters.

Here’s what the political landscape looks like six months before the midterms. The administration is waging the most unpopular war in history, with barely a whiff of dissent from Republicans. That war has, predictably, produced skyrocketing gas prices, perhaps the most sure-fire way to incur the wrath of the voters. Republicans have passed just one significant piece of legislation since Trump became president again, a tax cut for the wealthy that ballooned the cost of health coverage for tens of millions and caused millions to lose their coverage altogether. Trump’s economic policies, which Republicans continue to defend, have pushed his approval ratings on the cost of living down into the 20s.

Meanwhile, he’s beefing with the Pope, promoting hugely unpopular data centers, and at a moment when the affordability of everyday life is an urgent concern, dismissing that as stupid and short-sighted while obsessing endlessly over his gold-gilded ballroom.

Privately, Republicans are not happy about the fact that Trump seems determined to make them lose their seats in November. But what are they doing publicly? They just released a reconciliation bill to fund ICE that amounts to a slush fund for that disgraced agency of thugs, and includes a billion dollars for, you guessed it, Trump’s ballroom.

It’s not that they don’t go out every day and try to make a case for why everything they’re doing is worthwhile. But they know it’s not working. Persuasion is no longer the goal, which is part of why they’re so eager to reshape the electoral system so they don’t have to persuade anyone.

At first, the cult seems like a great idea

How did a party that has been pretty smart about politics get to this state of debasement? The answer may lie in the dynamics of the personality cult, which is absolutely what today’s Republican Party has become.

When Barack Obama was president, Republicans accused Democrats of constructing a cult of personality around him, despite the fact that Democrats weren’t building statues of him, renaming airports in his honor, or trying to divert taxpayer funds to his pet projects (let alone his own pockets). Republicans’ evidence for their charge consisted almost entirely of this: Obama is very charismatic and Democrats like him a lot, and we hate that. But since every accusation is a confession when it comes to the right these days, they were just waiting for the right leader around whom they could build their own cult of personality, and in 2016 they got him.

In retrospect, we often focus on the cult’s dramatic fall, the moment when the adherents destroy themselves, sometimes literally, at the behest of a cult leader who has obviously lost his mind. But it’s worth remembering that however they end up, cults that achieve any kind of success do so because the cult leader has genuine talents and offers adherents something compelling. That’s true of cult leaders like Jim Jones, and it’s true of political cults like the one around Mao or the one around Trump.

Trumpism may have required moral compromise from the beginning, but for Republicans who cared about power as well as political and policy success, joining up turned out to be a great deal. For many it led to temporary success and a place in congressional majorities, while for some it vaulted them to heights they could never have achieved under another president. If a saner Republican were president right now, Pete Hegseth would still be a weekend Fox & Friends cohost and Kash Patel would have a podcast with 200 subscribers; instead they’re two of the most powerful people in America.

But the fall we’re seeing now was exactly what many Republicans warned about in early 2016:

That seemed like the shrewd political assessment at the time, which is why the rush to Trump’s side happened in waves. The first wave was the chaos agents like Steve Bannon, along with the collection of bigots, misogynists, and all-around assholes for whom Trump was everything they’d ever been hoping for. Every douchebag, sleazebag, scumbag, and dirtbag looked at him and said, “Yeah, that’s my guy.”

But as the months went on, more sensible Republicans decided that they too had no choice but to get on board, and eventually they even concluded that Trump’s deranged personality and relentless self-promotion had met its historical moment; in other words, that becoming part of the cult was not something they had been forced into against their will, but the smart political move. And today, almost every Republican, whether they joined up the day after he declared his candidacy or the day before the election, is in the same boat.

When the cult goes bad

In cults like Jonestown, the leader’s own descent into madness pulls everyone down with him, and that’s pretty much what’s happening now. There may not be any way to avert a midterm blowout, but a different president would at least be promoting policies that weren’t so directly and dramatically damaging to his party’s political fortunes. He wouldn’t be knocking down buildings and talking constantly about his ballroom, and he wouldn’t have started a war like the one we’re in and telling people that they just have to suck it up and tolerate $5 a gallon gas because things will magically get better.

But now you have two factors that together are dooming the party. First, Trump is basically decompensating; whatever ability he once had to attract and persuade people has withered away, and all that’s left are the most unappealing parts of his personality. He is gaining no new adherents; instead, he’s losing support among the electorate every day.

Second, he built the current incarnation of the GOP around absolute loyalty to him, enforced through the kind of petty revenge he’s still trying to carry out. With just a couple of exceptions (e.g. Rep. Thomas Massie, whom Trump is trying very hard to defeat), Republicans all decided that they would not only support him unequivocally but engage in regular rituals of public fealty, the result of which is that their own identities were subsumed and voters who are mad at Trump can reasonably take out that anger at anyone with an R after their name.

Put it together, and every Republican on the ballot is little more than an appendage of a mad king who grows more unstable by the day. When he was relatively popular (or at least seemed like a good vehicle for voters’ grievances) it worked out well for them, but now that he’s unpopular, they’re screwed. And every day from now until November, he’ll probably get worse — more insane rants, more foolish policy decisions, more petty squabbles, more reasons for voters to decide that they should use their ballots to say “We’ve had enough of this.”

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