Break the Lockstep

The verdict in the Hunter Biden gun possession case came less than two weeks after former President Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 charges in his New York hush money trial, where the jury determined he broke the law, many times over, by falsifying business records to cover up, amid his 2016 presidential bid, a sexual encounter he had with a porn star a decade earlier. Likewise, it is an example of equal justice under the law in the United States, but Trump is not accepting that and has called on the U.S. Supreme Court to annul the guilty verdict, allowing him to leapfrog the appeals process that any other American would be subject to.

Trump’s response to the verdict is disappointing but unsurprising, given his attitude toward personal accountability. Even more disappointing is the response from U.S. Representative Nick LaLota, the Republican who occupies the 1st District congressional seat despite not living in the 1st District. LaLota was quick to share on social media his characterization of the case as a “political prosecution” and to call on Governor Kathy Hochul to pardon Trump. Failing to issue a pardon, LaLota insisted, would reduce America to a “banana republic.” It is a strange thing for a self-proclaimed “law and order” politician to ask for.

LaLota, like the overwhelming majority of Republican office-holders, has fallen into lockstep with Trump. Whatever Trump says has become LaLota’s default position, no matter how counterfactual or lawless it is.

Fealty to Trump has become the measure of a candidate’s fitness for office among fellow Republicans. It has supplanted what elections are supposed to be about: the issues. And this goes both ways, in that Democratic challengers overly rely on tying Republican incumbents to Trump rather than emphasizing where they diverge on the issues.

One day, whether it’s this November or a little more than four years from now, the country will have to move on from Trump, like it or not, and look for its next leader. Those who only define themselves by being pro- or anti-Trump will be left without much of an identity. Those who campaign on their principles, priorities and policies, and put the work in to match their actions to their words, will be the strongest candidates in a post-Trump political landscape.