Others have noted that the Republicans are acting a lot like Leninists these days. Former House Speaker Denny Hastert, who created the 'Hastert Rule,' which stopped legislation if it didn't have a Republican majority already behind it, had a lot to do with
exacerbating the extremist trend in the party:Still, the political dynamics of the two situations, a world and a century apart, have striking similarities. Kerensky refused to criticize Lenin and the Bolsheviks because he regarded them as potent allies against a revival of monarchism, which he (mistakenly) saw as the real enemy. Similarly, Republican leaders—including many who knew better—embraced Trump and now refuse to dissociate themselves from his most fanatical followers because they were, and are, seen as potent bulwarks against the Democrats’ liberal programs, which they see as the real enemy.
A few Republicans are beginning to grasp the depths of their miscalculation. On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the party’s most cynically opportunistic (and, for that reason, often the most effective) strategist of the past decade, condemned “loony lies and conspiracy theories” as a “cancer for the Republican Party and our country,” adding, “Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”
