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The anti-Trump resistance — especially its mainstream-liberal-media battalion — wakes up every day and turns on the news expecting to hear that Republicans are finally abandoning the president en masse. It hasn’t happened yet, and it may not ever happen.The still-unsubstantiated charges about collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians didn’t do it. Nor did the firestorm about firing FBI director James Comey. And though many of the talking heads on the cable news channels thought yesterday’s scoop about the alleged passing of classified information to the Russians would do the trick, as of now there’s no sign that most conservatives have decided to throw in the towel on President Trump.But no one in White House or the Republican party, in or out of Congress, should be all that encouraged by this trend. Even if Trump voters are, as polls continue to show, sticking with the man they voted for last November, come hell or high water, the burden of rationalizing and/or defending the president is still exacting a high price from the GOP . . .. . . The enthusiasm gap between Trump supporters and those of Clinton last year played no small role in determining the outcome. Can anyone on the right pretend that this factor isn’t now working in the Democrats’ favor, and that the reason is Trump’s often indefensible behavior? This will act as a drag on congressional Republicans as they labor to turn the country’s attention back to the issues they want to work on in the year and a half they have left before the next election. It will also hamper their ability to compete effectively in the midterms. While we’re a long way from the Democrats’ being able to credibly claim that they will do a 2010-in-reverse next year, each Trump controversy gives them more confidence and further depresses GOP morale.There may be no such thing as a Trumpian act that will constitute a tipping point in the sense of making Republicans openly abandon him. The real tipping point for Trump may be the moment when he will have so depressed his base that it will no longer constitute an effective counterbalance to the Democrats’ resistance media machine. When that point is reached, GOP majorities and any hope that Trump can successfully govern may be gone. If that isn’t something that will scare the Trump White House into a genuine if probably futile attempt to keep the president’s loose lips in check, nothing is.
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Topic: The Trump Tipping Point for Conservatives? (Read 308 times)
