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How will the GOP recover from the complicity and corruption of the Trump era? To many Republicans, the answer is simple: Pretend it never happened.
My story on the collective case of amnesia about to set in among conservatives: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/republicans-are-already-rewriting-trump-years/617715/
My story on the collective case of amnesia about to set in among conservatives: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/republicans-are-already-rewriting-trump-years/617715/
“We’re about to see a whole political party do a large-scale version of ‘New phone, who dis?’” says Sarah Isgur, a former spokesperson for the Trump DOJ. “It will be like that boyfriend you should never have dated—the mistake that shall not be mentioned.” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/republicans-are-already-rewriting-trump-years/617715/
When I asked Doug Heye, a longtime GOP strategist, how his party will remember the Trump years, he responded with a litany of episodes to memory-hole: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/republicans-are-already-rewriting-trump-years/617715/
Terry Sullivan, who ran Marco Rubio's presidential campaign, on Republicans' righteous indignation after the Capitol riot: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/republicans-are-already-rewriting-trump-years/617715/
The hardcore MAGA crowd will remain, of course, and those few who consistently opposed Trump will escape with their reputations intact. But for most GOP officials, apparatchiks, and commentators, whitewashing the Trump years will be the only way forward: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/republicans-are-already-rewriting-trump-years/617715/
There is precedent: Many predicted that the Republicans who worked for George W. Bush, especially the architects of the Iraq War, would be shunned. Instead, they settled into respectable—and lucrative—perches as commentators, lobbyists, and elder statesmen https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/republicans-are-already-rewriting-trump-years/617715/
