The Complicity of the Gutless, Self-Gelding Beltway Barnacles

If Warren Zevon were alive today, I imagine he’d glance at the smoking ruins of American democracy and offer a cigarette to the last firefighter walking off the job. Because the house is burning, and the people who were supposed to sound the alarm are now flipping marshmallows over the coals.

This is a pox on every current or former Republican elected official, every D.C. policy wonk, every think-tank libertarian, every “principled” conservative, every consultant and operative, every comms flack who flinched at Trump in 2016, held their nose in 2020, and now in 2025 are all-in, pretending they never saw the flames. They saw the incompetence. The ignorance. The corruption. The racism. The appeals to violence. The fascist cosplay. They watched Trump mismanage a pandemic that killed a million Americans. They watched him try to shake down Ukraine. They watched the tear gas fly at Lafayette Square. They watched January 6th.

And they watched us watch them.

They offered somber nods. Whispered about principles. Clutched pearls over civility. Told us, “I could never vote for him, but I just can’t go along with the far-left agenda.”

Then Trump lost. And instead of backing the Constitution, they backed away from the fight. They let the tumor grow back. And now that he’s returned to power — with a vengeance, a vendetta list, a castrated Congress, and a perverted and retributive Justice Department in his pocket — they’ve decided to go along to get along. Because “we need to win,” because “it’s about judges,” because “Biden was too old,” because their taxes will be lower, because “Harris was too progressive,” because of some freshman DEI policy at Oberlin College or the University of Michigan.

Spare me.

These gutless, self-gelding Beltway barnacles didn’t get radicalized. They got professionalized. They checked the wind, saw the authoritarian weather forecast, and chose to sell umbrellas.

There is no Trump 2.0 without these Vichy collaborators. He doesn’t have the IQ or impulse control to govern without them. They write the policies. They run the agencies. They polish the lies. MAGA isn’t a grassroots movement — it’s a fascist aesthetic wrapped around a cynical, calculating elite that knows exactly what it’s doing: Dismantling democracy for profit and power.

Look around. The Department of Justice is now a MAGA war room. News agencies are threatened with being frog-marched into courtrooms for asking the wrong questions. State National Guards have been federalized — and active duty Marines deployed — to occupy Los Angeles. And those “respectable” Republicans? The ones who were “uncomfortable” with Trump before? They’re writing op-eds praising his “leadership.” They’re spinning the gutting of civil liberties as “order.” They’re appeasing tyranny but collecting paychecks.

These aren’t rubes at a rally in Sheboygan or the MAGA meth chorus from Bumfuck County. These are the guys in the green rooms and boardrooms, at the Capitol Hill Club, in the donor retreats and Capitol cloakrooms. They know better. They knew better.

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This piece isn’t about the true believers. It’s about the Quisling converts. The ones who once winced when Trump called the press “enemies of the people,” and would now cheer if he arrests them. The ones who once said, “This is not conservatism,” and now insist, “This is what the people want.”

Here’s what they’ll tell you: “Well, at least he’s not Biden or Harris.”

Here’s what I’ll tell them: Go to hell. Take your donor checks, your green room smirks, your fat fees and commissions — and shove them straight up your morally bankrupt asses.

They were in the house. They saw the fire. And instead of helping us put it out, they grabbed a lawn chair and roasted hot dogs.

Trump is not an aberration. He is the product of years of GOP rot. But the metastasis we’re living through in this second term? That required enablers. The malignancy spreads because they let it. Because they normalized it. Because they put their lifestyles above their country.

You want a Warren Zevon lyric for that? Here:

“Even a dog can shake hands.”

But only a truly treasonous mutt licks the boot that kicks democracy. They’re not patriots. They’re gutless co-conspirators in a hostile takeover. They’re mitläufers at best, Eichmanns at worst. They may have to rationalize a metric ass-ton of abhorrence to look themselves in the mirror. But at least those mirrors they’re gazing into are hanging in their beach house while the embers of their craven complicity threaten to combust our house divided. Amirite?

Jeff Timmer is a political consultant, strategist, and Warren Zevon fan. He was Executive Director of the Michigan Republican Party and served as a Republican on the Michigan Board of State Canvassers. He is a Senior Advisor to the Lincoln Project.

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