We might as well impeach Donald Trump. That was the sentiment of a sitting Republican member of Congress confiding in conservative blogger and radio host Erick Erickson as the two walked through a Safeway. The anonymous member said the president was an “idiot,” “evil,” “stupid.”
It was hardly the first time: During the later stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, GOP strategists anonymously expressed concern that Trump might win. In 2017 Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, seemingly unaware that she was on a hot microphone, acknowledged she was “worried” about the administration. Still others reportedly have suggested the president should be removed from office though they, too, have almost always done so on background.
In speaking with my former Republican colleagues still serving in Congress, the consistent refrain I hear is, “I’m just keeping my head down, trying not to get noticed.”
Some have privately said that serving in Congress during the Trump administration is “miserable.” A colleague who has decided to call it quits confessed he was doing so to try to salvage his political career by not being forever branded a “Trump Republican.”
Like Erickson’s anonymous interlocutor, these politicians are engaging in what can only be considered a personal catharsis of sorts, not an act of political courage. A meaningful political statement would have been on the record, direct to voters, and would have substantively contributed to the national debate in which we remain engaged regarding this president’s fitness for office. This wasn’t that.
Few Republican officials today are willing to openly criticize the president even if they have deeply held reservations about his ability to govern. They instead keep their lament private, their panic measured and their comments off the record. It’s a situation that needs to change. If you believe in serving your constituents, you are obliged to speak up and speak publicly.
It’s obvious why Republican congressmen and congresswomen remain silent. This is Trump’s Republican Party, and his approval numbers among Republican voters sit at close to 90 percent. Cross him and you risk not only the wrath of the president himself but also the electoral base that he has cultivated to gain control of the party.
“Bob Corker … couldn’t get elected dog catcher,” Trump wrote about the Tennessee senator. Arizona’s “Jeff Flake, weak on crime.” John McCain “let Arizona down.” Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski “really let the Republicans, and our country, down.” Nebraska’s Ben Sasse “looks more like a gym rat than a U.S. Senator.” With each of these statements, furiously typed into Twitter and read by his 50 million-odd followers, the president targeted his fellow Republicans.
Knowingly or not, members of Congress choose one of two approaches to serving.
Many strictly embrace their partisan identity, believing with honest conviction that they promised to uphold a party platform that voters back home both affirmed and expected their representative to enforce. A smaller minority of members of Congress embraces the notion that though elected in partisan races, they hold a greater responsibility — that upon taking the oath of office they hold a public trust and are called upon to advance the nation’s broader interests, even if that means at times going against their party. The latter approach was the very essence of James Madison’s embrace of a republican form of government. As he puts it in the Federalist Papers, No. 10, a chosen representative may “best discern the true interest of their country” and provide a voice “more consonant to the greater good.”
But both Madison and the congressman in Safeway also understood a universal truth: You can’t take politics out of politics. There are consequences for speaking out. Former Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, R-Pa., famously cast the deciding vote for President Bill Clinton’s tax package only to be voted out of office one year later. Just last year McCain gave a dramatic thumbs-down on the Senate floor to sink the Republican repeal of the Affordable Care Act and now is lampooned by many within his own party as being insufficiently partisan.
During my years in the House, I witnessed members on the Democrats’ side of the aisle publicly vote on the House floor against California’s Nancy Pelosi to be their leader, just as GOP members coordinated to stop the coronation of Kevin McCarthy following the resignation of Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. These members largely lost the support of their party’s fundraising arms, suffered through immense criticism from their base and were often relegated to inconsequential committee work in the Congress.
I called on Trump to drop out of the presidential race from the House floor in December 2015. I was also a Republican advocate for marriage equality, I embraced the science behind climate change, I voted against the Planned Parenthood investigation, I advocated reasonable gun control measures, I pushed radical campaign finance reform.
The result? The party apparatus that spent millions on my behalf in my first run for Congress happily spent zero in my last. I lost my race, and now I’m a political commentator rather than an elected official.
But losing your office doesn’t mean you have to lose your voice. My wife and I call it the “sleep well at night test.” There’s something Margolies-Mezvinsky, McCain and these other outspoken members have that too many of today’s Republican leaders don’t: courage. These members each went on the record, stood on principle and accepted the political consequences of doing what they believed reflected the right direction for the country.
Today we have a president who continually undermines our most basic institutions, from attacking an independent judiciary and law enforcement agents, to belittling a free press that has been a bedrock of our nation since its founding, to normalizing an invective form of politics while injecting increasing volatility into both our economic and national security, to flirting with the onset of a constitutional crisis caused by his own actions. On policy we face rising economic inequality and health care costs, a crippled immigration policy, insufficient access to higher education, soaring deficits and no response to national tragedies like those of Parkland.
These are challenges worth confronting. For voters, it’s a political debate to which we contribute every two years in November. But for the 535 men and women on Capitol Hill there lies a greater responsibility — a responsibility envisioned when our founders drafted the Constitution and a responsibility knowingly accepted by the members of Congress, all of whom owe to us true faith and allegiance to the same.
Which is why the casual supermarket conversation between a congressman and a journalist on background isn’t funny. It’s scandalous.
The nation deserves to know the honest convictions of its elected representatives, whether they be defenders or critics of this president, particularly during a chapter of such political uncertainty that many Americans now fear the constitutional ramifications of an early termination to Trump’s presidency. The silence of these members of Congress is both a violation of the public trust and a reflection of their own lack of personal and political mettle.
What too many members of Congress fail to see is this: If you don’t go on the record, your opinion doesn’t count. Worse, neither will your legacy. Refusing to publicly acknowledge your convictions simply affirms your unwillingness to act on them. And that is an indictment of you, not the president.
History rightfully discards those unwilling to take a stand; those who, in the face of a divided nation, shrink from controversy and seek refuge in the shadows of their own indecision. Conversely, it memorializes those who speak with courage; those who, at defining national moments, put country over party.
So speak up. Your legacy will be richer for it. But know this: There will be no record of your legacy if you continue to whisper on background.
David Jolly is a frequent television news analyst and Republican former member of Congress of Florida.