Cassidy and Cornyn, Caucus With Ds, You Cowards

Take revenge on Trump and save the Republic.

Yesterday Trump, in his infinite anti-wisdom, endorsed scandal-plagued whackadoodle Ken Paxton for Texas Senate over incumbent more-normalish-GOP-asshole John Cornyn. Senate Republicans are livid, both because they think Paxton will lose the general and because if he should win they’ll be stuck with a vile showboating piece of shit as a colleague.

The day before endorsing Cornyn, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy lost his primary, largely because Trump has never forgiven him for voting for impeachment after January 6. Cassidy, who has no reason to try to curry Trump’s favor anymore, immediately turned around and said he’s not going to vote for the president’s orange atrocity of a ballroom, so there.

It’s nice to see Cassidy try out a spine, which he removed during the RFK confirmation process. (Cassidy is a physician with a career-long commitment to childhood vaccinations, which he tossed aside to install the leading antivax ghoul in the country in the nation’s most powerful public health office.) But if Cassidy and Cornyn and other frequent Trump targets like Collins (likely to lose her Senate seat in Maine this November), Thom Tillis (who already decided not to run in North Carolina) and Lisa Murkowski really want revenge, they can do a lot better than vote down Trump’s vanity emporium.

Following the election in November, they should caucus with Democrats.

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Why they should

Cornyn, Cassidy, Tillis, Collins, and Murkowski have all been targeted by Trump to one extent or another because they all have had political or policy differences with him—on abortion, on vaccines, on control of the Fed, on whether or not he’s the president of a democracy or a god-king.

He’s also made it his business to personally try to destroy the careers of all of them to one extent or another—and of course he’s used his platform to encourage his Nazi fan base to target them for death threats. Trump treats other Republican leaders like serfs at best and toilets at worst. Republicans generally just grin and eat the shit. But they don’t have to do that. If Murkowski, et. al., caucused with Democrats and gave them control of the chamber, it would be a massive, humiliating blow to Trump, derailing his agenda and his kleptocratic corruption—inasmuch as a Democratic Congress could start hearings immediately.

Personal animus is a fine reason to kick a fascist psychopath. But beyond that, the reason for Republicans to caucus with Democrats, particularly after the midterm elections, is because if they don’t, the Constitution will be in enormous peril.

Most discussions of democratic threat right now are focused on Trump’s efforts to rig the midterms before they happen. He’s doing that mostly through gerrymandering, though he’s also talked a bit about sending armed gestapo to terrorize voters at polling locations.

This is obviously all very, very bad. But it’s worth remembering that Trump’s most egregious insurrection attempts occurred in the period between November 2020, when he lost the election, and January, when the new president was installed. It was at that point that Trump attempted to overthrow election results in court, targeted local officials (including election workers) for stochastic terror, and eventually organized a violent coup in an effort to murder members of Congress and his own vice-president.

History doesn’t exactly repeat, and I wouldn’t expect the period after November 2026 to replicate in all respects the period after 2020. But especially if Democrats win the Senate and the House, it should surprise no one if Trump and Vance and the sycophantic House Speaker Mike Johnson attempt to prevent the new Congress from being seated. They will probably start with lawfare, but they may well escalate to arrests of elected representatives. They might even attempt military occupation of the chambers.

It’s difficult to know how Congress or other institutions could or should handle these worst case scenarios. But one thing is certain—Republican control of Congress will make it much, much more difficult for the legislative branch to reign Trump in. Senate majority leader Thune is marginally more willing to buck Trump than Johnson, but only marginally. It’s difficult to imagine either of them denouncing Trump for arresting colleagues. It’s even harder to see them pushing back in any more forceful way.

If four or five lame-duck Republican Senators switched sides and gave Democrats control of the Senate, though, the dynamics would be very different. The incentive to nullify the election would be much diminished in the first place. Democrats would already control the Senate, so there’d be little point in preventing a new Democratic majority from taking control. Democrats would also be in a position to make sure the new Congress was seated.

Perhaps as importantly, Cassidy, Tillis, Murkowski, Collins, Cornyn making this kind of statement of no confidence in Trump would be a massive blow to his prestige, his power, and his standing. It would tell other actors in media and local government that Trump not only was not going to win, but that he had already lost. That would reduce the efficacy of his bullying and stiffen the skeletal structure of his targets. It would make the survival of the Republic, not certain, but much more likely.

Why we should say they should, even if they won’t

Whenever you say, “Republicans should maybe do something that is not horrible,” someone is sure to pipe up to say, “How dare you suggest Republicans aren’t horrible! Don’t you know they are all monstrous fascists whose souls are corrupt!?”

I do in fact know that Republicans are all monstrous fascists whose souls are corrupt. However, being a monstrous fascist with a corrupt soul is a choice—and more, it is a choice that is continually renewed. Republicans have agency and free will. They wake up every day and decide to continue to be Republicans and to continue to attack the Constitution, but they do not have to do that. They could make different choices—and sometimes, some of them sort of do, around the edges, as Bill Cassidy demonstrated by taking a belated stance against Trump’s ballroom.

We shouldn’t rely on Republicans to do the right thing. But we shouldn’t let them off the hook either. And when we refuse to demand that they do better, we are in fact letting them off the hook.

Democrats are not the only people with agency. Democrats are not the only ones with a responsibility to protect the Constitution and to serve their constituents. To say, “Cassidy and Tillis and Cornyn should caucus with Democrats” does not mean, “Cassidy and Tillis and Cornyn are good and honorable people.” It means that they are powerful people who have real options to stop Trump.

Demanding more from Republicans is also a way to underline just how much peril we are in. There has never been a moment when a substantial number of Senators caucused with their opponents to forestall a violent coup. Quisling Republicans like Cornyn and Murkowski almost certainly won’t be the first. But when they refuse, we should be clear that they are, in fact, refusing to forestall that coup.

Extraordinary dangers require extraordinary resistance. When people won’t resist, we should be clear that that makes the dangers worse. Cassidy, Tillis, Cornyn, Murkowski, Collins, Paul, McConnell, and really every single Republican Senator and Congressperson could be instrumental in saving our Constitution, if they wanted. If they don’t want—well, that doesn’t mean they are refusing to act. It means, on the contrary, that they have decided—consciously, deliberately— to join Trump in plunging a knife into the Republic’s heart.