"For years — decades even — the conservative elite had alternately tolerated, recruited or activated racists, white nationalists and white supremacists. The elite have their own versions of these biases, but they thought themselves more erudite and tactical, not brash and brazen. They would use surgical tools of voter suppression, states’ rights campaigns and defense of marriage and the unborn to advance their goals in a way they saw as honorable.
"But Trump saw the voters that the elites kept under the stairs, the ones they want to excite only around election time. He saw the resentment and rage in them. He saw that their voices had been muted and their tongues chastened.
"He drew them out. He let them vent. He allowed them to see they were indeed the majority of the party. He offered to be their leader, their white knight of white power, and they accepted. They grew loud and strong and he fed them red meat. They rampaged and he basked in the glow of the blaze.
"Leader
and followers had found each other. Now the traditional Republicans
were on the run or on the ropes. Rather than become victims of the mob,
they yielded to it. They tried to tap into it. They tried to grab the
reins of it." -- Charles Blow, explaining the dynamic that will keep the vast majority of spineless, craven Republican Senators from voting to convict their putrescent "alpha male."
