'He has cowed them all': Political insiders mock GOP's 'Trump addiction'

The GOP has found itself in disarray and allowed Democrats to outorganize them due to their "Trump addiction," insiders told Politico's Jonathan Martin.

This comes as Democrats are gearing up for their 2024 convention in Chicago this week — and while there are some signs of discontent, like the Gaza demonstrations around the city, the party has managed to pull itself together into a far more unified state than they have been throughout the cycle under Vice President Kamala Harris.

Not only that, Martin wrote, everything is falling into place in a way not anticipated just weeks ago: "President Biden is finally going to give in? Get in line behind Harris — now. The vice president is discarding her now-inconvenient left-wing proposals from her 2020 primary bid and airing tough-on-the-border ads? Nod. She’s inviting a cast of Obama-era Democratic consultants onto the campaign she inherited from Biden? Salute. Bill Clinton’s old saw that Democrats fall in love while Republicans fall in line has been reversed."

Political insiders on both sides have noticed this shift — and see at least as much of a hand in this from Trump as Harris.

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“He has cowed them all into being afraid of saying anything,” said former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), who previously ran against Trump twice in the primary, of the rest of the GOP. “Our party has just completely caved, strategically and tactically.” Democratic strategist Paul Begala, meanwhile, highlighted the fact that the RNC had no former Republican presidents or nominees to champion Trump, while the DNC will have such a lineup from their own party: “These are people who have gotten tens of millions of votes. Not clicks, not Only Fans subscriptions. The holy grail of politics is capturing votes and winning and, while we love them, that’s why they’re on stage.”

The fact is, despite the GOP's surface loyalty to Trump, "it’s worth considering what has — or has not — taken place since he effectively claimed the Republican nomination. Hundreds of thousands of primary voters kept voting for zombie candidates" — and Trump, rather than reaching out to those competing wings of the party, "has continued to lash out at his best-known skeptics, many of them now out of office, and even current GOP officeholders, like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp."

There's no equivalent on the other side, former Democratic strategist James Carville told Martin: “If a Democrat said, ‘I don’t want Bernie Sanders voters,’ even moderate Democrats would say ‘You’re out of your f--king mind.’”