At first blush, it’s easy to look at the retirements of GOP Rep. Don Bacon and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis as the latest examples of the Republican Party’s abdication to President Donald Trump. Both men were willing to speak out or vote against pieces of the Trump agenda. In this era, that behavior is usually met with swift and unrelenting pressure by the president — and an almost certain primary challenge.
However, the departure of fed-up moderates isn’t an exclusively Republican phenomenon. Iconoclasts from both sides have been weeded out of Congress, as the two parties and their most loyal supporters continue to prize loyalty over all else. For Republicans, that loyalty is centered almost exclusively around fealty to the president, not to a specific ideology. For Democrats, the loyalty is centered around opposition to Trump. Democrats who aren’t seen as team players are castigated for failing to keep up proper vigilance to the threat Trump presents to democracy.
Since 2017, Republican critics of Trump such as Sens. Bob Corker, Mitt Romney, and Jeff Flake have opted to leave Congress
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