The Republican Party Has a Red Line Problem

[ view in browser.   add esquire@newsletter.esquire.com to your address book ]             FOLLOW US       In the Cult of Trump, There Is No Red Line for the President to Cross   As the GOP increasingly comes to resemble a personality cult, is there any red line—video tapes? DNA evidence? a war with Germany—President Trump could cross and lose party support? "Very doubtful," say a dozen GOP members of Congress stuck hard behind the MAGA eight ball. Mark Sanford, a Republican congressman from South Carolina who lost his seat in June after sparring with the president on several issues, has been thinking a lot about Hitler. He is quick to point out that he is not comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. "Let me be clear about that, okay?" he told me days after he was defeated in a GOP primary that was defined by one overriding question: Which candidate was more slavishly devoted to the president? It wasn't really a contest. Sanford, a brooding lone wolf among House Republicans, has survived a lot in his political career. He was a member of the House in the nineties and then a popular two-term governor, though his last two years in office were marred by his notorious "hiking the Appalachian trail" adultery scandal. He divorced his wife and narrowly averted impeachment by the South Carolina legislature. After it was all behind him, he ran for Congress again in a 2013 special election and found that voters in the overwhelmingly Republican district had forgiven him. But that was five long years ago. In the Trump era, most Republicans, when approached by reporters on Capitol Hill, have learned to scurry away or feign an important call on their cell phones to avoid the inevitable questions about the most recent lunatic comment from the president. "If we tried to respond to everything the president said, we'd never get anything done," said Lynn Jenkins, a House Republican from Kansas who told me she saves her public condemnations of Trump for only his most egregious statements, like the time he made up a story about a female TV anchor "bleeding badly from a face-lift." But Sanford, while still voting about 70 percent of the time with Trump on legislation, hasn't been shy about criticizing the president, taking him to task for everything from his budget ("a lie") to the Stormy Daniels scandal ("deeply troubling"). READ MORE       These Are Not Hamburgers—But You're Going to Love Them Anyway   It's time to forget everything you thought you knew about fake meat. Read On         For the Rom-Com to Make Its Comeback, It Had to Break Its Formula   A new focus on stories about people who aren't just white twentysomethings has given rom-coms a much-needed adrenaline shot. Read On         The 'Basic' T-Shirt That's Anything but Basic   Standard Issue makes tees that'd make Brando proud. Read On         'Required Viewing' Gets Thrown Around a Lot. Hannah Gadsby's Nanette Transcends the Hyperbole.   The brilliance of this groundbreaking comedy special lies within in its charge to improve the human condition. Read On         10 Lightweight Suits to Keep You Cool This Summer   Tailoring that feels as fresh as it looks. Read On       Unsubscribe •  Privacy Notice   esquire.com ©2018 Hearst Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Email Privacy, 300 W 57th St., Fl. 19 (sta 1-1), New York, NY 10019