The GOP is always looking for a fight

President Trump's resistance to reality is legendary by now, but you should still be skeptical of reports that he might not actually leave the White House when President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20. Sure, Trump hates losing, but being forcibly ejected from the Oval Office would only compound his humiliation. My guess is he'd prefer to go back to Mar-a-Lago voluntarily — shouting the whole time that he was robbed — rather than be subjected to a televised perp walk.

Still, the possibility can't be entirely ruled out, can it? After all, Trump's fans like that he puts up a fight — and that he keeps fighting long past the point of absurdity. Refusing to leave office would, at the very least, be very on-brand for the outgoing president. It's what a fighter would do — never mind whether it's good for the country, or makes any sense at all.

How did it come to this?

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There has long been a widely held belief on the right that the problem with Republican politics is that it is too nice, that Democrats and their lefty allies play hardball while conservatives stick to outdated forms of decorum. For such believers, Trump is a welcome relief from the "surrender caucus," also sometimes sneeringly known as "Conservatism Inc."

"While the left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality, and propriety," conservative comedian Evan Sayet wrote in 2017. "With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America's first wartime president in the Culture War."

This assessment will come as a surprise to anybody who remembers (for example) when conservatives pushed the false theory that the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered, or when leading Republicans sidestepped "birther" rumors about then-President Barack Obama, or when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blocked Obama's appointment of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, or anything about the careers of operatives like Lee Atwater, Roger Stone, and Karl Rove.

Indeed, if American politics is a knife fight, many observers would say Republicans have more than held their own in recent decades. And yet, for the Trumpier precincts of the right, that's not enough.

Take McConnell. He is probably as implacable a Republican leader as anyone the party has put forth in recent decades. Aside from blocking Garland's appointment, he helped pioneer the GOP's strategy of refusing almost any cooperation with Democrats during the Obama administration, dispensed with the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments to get Neil Gorsuch confirmed to the court, and now stands as the chief obstacle to Biden's plans. For Democrats, that's infuriating, but it is difficult to imagine anyone else in his position being more effective for his party's agenda.

And yet, McConnell has belatedly acknowledged that Biden has won the presidential election, which infuriated Trump. "Republican Party must finally learn to fight!" the president tweeted on Tuesday. McConnell has also occasionally cut deals with Democrats, or let the Dem-controlled House fight directly with Trump while standing to the side, which means astounding headlines like "Mitch McConnell's Complicity with Democrats" and "Mitch McConnell's Lame-Duck Sellout" are a mainstay at Trumpist websites like American Greatness.

The big problem with the right's "always fight harder" mentality is that it is anti-democratic, reducing politics purely to the exercise of your own side's will, instead of acknowledging that other factions will sometimes win elections for lots of other reasons — a bad economy, an unexpected pandemic, or a platform that simply appeals to more voters. It also exerts negative pressure on politics, which should be about getting things done for all Americans. Instead, the fight becomes the most important thing, the only thing, with participants judged primarily on their ability to "own the libs" or "have all the right enemies" instead of their capacity to do anything useful.

As always, Trump didn't create such attitudes within the Republican Party, but he has been masterful at identifying, exploiting, and encouraging them. He was rewarded with the presidency for doing so, and still retains the loyalty — and votes — of tens of millions of Americans. Which means that trouble still lurks. As long as a significant portion of society elevates an irrational fighting spirit as the highest quality in our leaders, fighting is mostly what we'll get.