Republicans embrace the 'cult' of Trump, ignoring warning signs

By David Weigel, Robert Costa and Seung Min Kim
June 13 at 8:21 PM

Fiercely and undeniably, the Republican Party this week confirmed its rebranding as the party of Trump.

Buoyed by a late Tuesday presidential tweet, voters in South Carolina cast out Rep. Mark Sanford, a firmly conservative member of Congress who had survived earlier scandal, in favor of a state legislator who had condemned Sanford for publicly criticizing the president. In Virginia, Republicans nominated for senator a Trump-like candidate with a history of embracing, as the president has, Confederate symbols and white nationalists.

The week was marked by continued deference to Trump on the part of congressional leaders who have swallowed the president’s upending of long-standing party views on several major issues. Legislative efforts by some in the party to wrest trade authority back from Trump and rewrite the nation’s immigration laws in ways he has opposed both fell in defeat.

Meanwhile, many in the party who in the past have opposed talks with North Korea’s leader this week praised Trump for his summit with Kim Jong Un.

As a result, the Republican Party appears united now not by fealty to ideas or policies but to a man, one who defied the odds to win the presidency and who has magnetically drawn the party’s power bases to himself.

“It’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it?” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee told reporters Wednesday morning. “It’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cultlike situation as it relates to a president that happens to be of — purportedly — of the same party.”

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-embrace-the-cult-of-trump-ignoring-warning-signs/2018/06/13/a69d9a72-6f37-11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html