American under a leadership cult

Allahpundit still strikes me as the most sensible conservative commenter at Hot Air - not that I agree with him much of the time, but he's under no illusions about the nature of Trump and his followers.  Here he is talking about Ann Coulter, a nut who has at least retained enough grip on reality to get dismayed at Trump's lying on her pet issue, who has pointed out that Hilary Clinton would have handled the immigration problem better:

She’s overstating her case in the clip below to get under Trump’s and his fans’ skin but a few realities are undeniable:

1. Trump will lie and lie about progress at the border (and everything else) and his more cultish fans will believe anything he says. A Democrat “couldn’t just tweet something out and have everybody say ‘yay,'” an annoyed Coulter notes at one point in the video. For months she’s tweeted sarcastically to counter Trump’s border reassurances. “NUMBER OF MILES OF WALL BUILT ON OUR SOUTHERN BORDER SINCE TRUMP HAS BEEN PRESIDENT: ZERO,” she wrote in a column last month titled “Trump By The Numbers.” There’s not a shred of doubt that a Democratic president presiding over the crush of phony asylum seekers Trump is coping with right now would be rhetorically shredded by border hawks every day, just as there’s no doubt that obstruction allegations about a Democrat like the ones Mueller laid out in his report yesterday would have Republicans demanding impeachment. A Democrat would need to show progress on the border, not merely claim it.

2. The partisan flip side of the argument in point one is that rank-and-file Democrats would have been muted in their criticism of tougher border enforcement measures implemented by a Democratic president. ...

3. It’s possible that Trump’s tough talk about the border without commensurately tough action is actually making the border stampede worse. Various news reports about migrants traveling north from Central America have noted how coyotes and other traffickers have tried to take advantage of Trump’s policies, warning would-be immigrants back home that the border is closing soon so they’d better act now. Trump’s recent “threat” to dump illegals on sanctuary cities might also be backfiring:

Still seems to me that although he understands the nature of the Trump cult, he is way too willing to downplay the disturbing nature of any personality cult in politics and the shocking willingness of Republican politicians to play along because it delivers them power which they fear losing if they contradict the cult membership  "base".   

And what strange bedfellows such American conservatives have - some on the Left, and the libertarian right, who hated Hilary Clinton so much (for reasons I still find pretty puzzling) that they also have developed a shrug-shoulders response to the most impulsively authoritarian, dumb ass President and barely functioning administration by nincompoops we have ever seen.     

Which leads me to the Mueller report:  in all likelihood the Cult of Trump will protect Trump from impeachment, even though there's no doubt that in their heart, a large slab of Republican politicians think it is deserved and would be greatly relieved to see Trump out of office.  (And as soon as he is, there will be yet more stories of his appalling statements and behaviour in private from such politicians suddenly seeking to distance themselves from him.)   But what do Democrats do in the meantime? - they can't really deny that impeachment is deserved, but they know a cult is a cult and that it has all Republicans cowered.

Also, I suspect that the average politically un-engaged American who still sometimes votes sees impeachment as a pretty time wasting exercise almost regardless of the reason, and as such there is risk of it turning them off due to the relative proximity of the next election.    

I strongly suspect that the cowardice of the those Republican politicians who ride on the Cult of Trump's tailcoats will be the great historical takeaway from this weird political era.