Why Does the GOP Leadership Support Trump?

While some pundits point out that in many states, the GOP candidates for governor, House of Representatives, the Senate as well as for state elected offices did far better than Trump, the leadership knows that does not mean that the GOP can win without Trump.  Many people fail to look beneath the surface and assume that the GOP does not need Trump since he under performs the party as a whole. It is more complex.

The non-Trumpers in the GOP will vote for the regular GOP candidates even if they do not vote for Trump.  There are not, however, enough reasonable GOP voters for the GOP to win elections.   The GOP calculates that with Trump’s headlining the 2022 campaign rallies, the Alt Right base will turn out like a horde of latter-day John The Baptists preparing the way for their savior’s Second Coming.

Trump’s Serious Mental Distort Comes with a Political Gift

In order to understand Trump’s role in GOP elections, one needs to think of Dustin Hoffman’s character, Raymond Babbitt, in the Rain Main.  Suppose the party which could count scattered toothpicks in an eye’s blink would win elections.  Then, autistic savants of the world would be in great demand.  Trump suffers from two personality disorders, but the most important one for politics is his Histrionic Personality Disorder. Like an autistic savant, it comes with a great gift – to amorally and without censorship reflect back to the crowd whatever it wants.  This gift derives from the features of the Histrionic Personality.

(1) Uncomfortable when not the center of attention

(2) Seductive or provocative behavior

(3) Shifting and shallow emotions

(4)  Uses appearance to draw attention

(5) Impressionistic and vague speech

(6) Dramatic or exaggerated emotions

(7) Suggestible (easily influenced by others)

(8) Considers relationships more intimate than they are

The interplay of these personality characteristics gives rise to a person who has a genius to play to the crowd in order to get approval.  People at the extremes cheer the loudest, and the more absurdly extremist the idea, the louder they cheer.  It’s 100% emotional with no room for rational thought, facts, or analysis.  Trump responds to whatever extreme faction cheers the loudest, and right-wing voters love nothing more than to have their prejudices validated.

It does not matter that Histrionics, like other savants, come with a serious intellectual defect.  Because they cannot exist without the mindless cheers of the crowd, they have virtually no critical faculty and will accept the most simplistic and clearly false ideas. 

It gets worse.  Because Trump’s needs to always be seen as the center of attention and to be the most popular person ever, he believes absurd lies.  Without shame, on national TV, he showed a cropped photo of his inauguration which cut out the vast empty spaces on the Mall in order to claim that more people attended his inauguration than attended Obama’s. 

According to Keith Still, a professor of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK, Trump had between 300,000 to 600,000 attendees, who fell far short of filling the Mall, which is why Trump had the photo doctored, while in 2009, Obama’s crowded was about 1.8 Million so that Obama’s crowd overflowed the Mall.  The general assessment is that at best Trump had one-third the number of attendees as Obama did in 2009.  This event is significant because it highlights why Trump is so wildly popular among the far-right wing – facts do not matter. Emotion is everything!  Trump believes utter nonsense which is why his own Secretary of State and former ExxonMobile CEO, Rex Tillerson, called him a ‘Fucking Moron.’ People who had worked for Trump often said he was an idiot.

Trump’s Presidency was the Most Disastrous in US History

Covid-19 did not sabotage Trump’s presidency.  In times of crisis, self-centered, preening, hyper Me-Me-Me emotionalism can be lethal.  For Trump, the fact that his response to Covid-19 caused over 500,000 Americans to die does not even register.  This is the same man who characterized Nazis’ marching in Charlottesville chanting, “Blood and Soil, Jews shall not replace us” as “very fine people.”  His daughter, son-in-law and his grandchildren are Jewish!  All Trump, the idiot savant Histrionic, grasped was that the marchers liked him and that made them very fine people, even if they would murder his own family with Zyklon B.  Trump’s savantic genius comes with a serious intellectual defect as is the case with other savants.

Denying Reality Guarantees The Alt Right Support

As Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders learned, there are no right-wing votes to be gained by heeding facts.  That’s why they still support the Big Lie resulting in the Stop the Steal insurrection on January 6th.  Anyone who supports facts, truth or reality is persona non grata for the GOP leadership. 

Dustin Hoffman’s character, Raymond Babbitt, could “count” the toothpicks.  But, the word “count” would be a misleading word choice to describe a savant’s skills.  “They access lower-level unprocessed information in the brain. That is, they are directly aware of details without being encumbered by the higher-level assembly of information into meaningful patterns and recognizable memories.”  SSM Health Savant Syndrome FAQs  Likewise, Trump reflects back to the crowd its most extreme and hateful emotions with complete congruence. Trump is not calculating his next move any more than savants count the toothpicks or consciously calculate prime numbers. It’s a genius which spontaneously arises, but always comes with an intellectual deficit.  

Dustin Hoffman’s avaricious brother, Charlie played by Tom Cruise, knew he could not replicate his brother’s savant ability any more than he could will himself to be Luciano Pavarotti. Likewise, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. Kevin McCarthy cannot mimic Trump’s savant like genius to mindlessly validate the most extreme views of the far-right wing, whom the GOP believes it must have in order to win the 2022 and 2024 elections.  McConnell and McCarthy are taking Trump to the elections, the way Tom Cruise took Dustin Hoffman to Las Vegas.  Vote counter vs card counter – it’s Tweedle Dee vs Tweedle Dum to McConnell and McCarthy.  All that matters is winning.

(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch. You may email him at [email protected])

-cw