Trump’s GOP Doctrine Is ‘Obey or Be Crushed’

Resistance is futile. This week, an astonishing development became clear: You can be as conservative as it gets. You can even be a champion Donald Trump enabler. But if you don’t do what he says—when he says it—you’re done.

Consider the fate of Sen. James Lankford, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, who helped negotiate a bipartisan border security deal; it ostensibly gave Republicans much of what they had long been demanding on the border (in exchange for procuring funding aid to Ukraine).

As punishment for doing his job, negotiating in good faith, and trying to solve a serious problem that Trump would prefer to linger, Lankford was swiftly betrayed by his Republican colleagues and condemned by the Oklahoma Republican Party. President Joe Biden, of all people, had the best description of what happened: “They really threw the man overboard.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.