‘The Quisling Establishment’

I wrote for Politico today about the establishment and Trump:

Few expected Donald Trump would be in a dominant position days before the Iowa caucuses. Fewer still expected the Republican establishment would be among the mogul’s deluded enablers. 

As if to validate every insult ever hurled at it, the GOP elite is putting on a display of fecklessness that has to surprise even its most vociferous critics. It is the quisling establishment.

We owe that term to Vidkun Quisling, who welcomed the Nazis into Norway in exchange for heading a puppet government. Of course, this isn’t World War II, and Winston Churchill’s ringing condemnation of quislings doesn’t quite apply here: “hired to fawn upon the conqueror, to collaborate in his designs and to enforce his rule upon their fellow countrymen while groveling low themselves.”

But the ground is being prepared for a judicious bout of groveling. All signs are that Beltway Republicans are ready and willing to accept their new Trumpian overlord.