Behind the Curtain: The 6 stages of political surrender

👉 Watch a video version of this column.

Republicans didn't decide to become President Trump's party. They surrendered to him, one stage at a time, over a decade, in plain sight.

• Democrats swear that socialism's growing grip on their party is different, and can be contained. The early signals suggest otherwise.

Why it matters: Party transformations follow a predictable six-stage evolution — recoil, squint, rationalize, submit, amplify, and purge. Each stage has language you can hear long before you see it in the votes. Republicans just finished the full cycle. Democrats might be starting it.

Watch how the language shifts, stage by stage, for signs of whether recent socialist wins are an anomaly, or the start of something bigger and broader.

• Stage 1: Recoil. Denounce, by name. Lindsey Graham called Trump a "kook" who was unfit for office. Ted Cruz called him a "pathological liar." That was 2016. Both later defended him against the exact words they coined.
• Stage 2: Squint. Support without looking. "I haven't seen the tweet" became the go-to response of House and Senate Republicans in Trump's first term when they were asked about the latest storm. Some did the binary dodge: "The other side is worse."
• Stage 3: Rationalize. This is the "yes, but" stage: "I don't love the style, but the judges ... the tax cuts ... the border ... He's a fighter." This is where accommodation becomes the norm, and the need to win trumps style or tactics.
• Stage 4: Submit. Dissent becomes career-ending. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said on the floor that Trump "bears responsibility" for Jan. 6. Two weeks later, McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to make peace. In less than three years, he'd been ousted as speaker. Silence becomes life-and-death survival.
• Stage 5: Amplify. Fully adopt the vocabulary, the style, the maximal claims. Try to out-Trump Trump. After privately calling Trump "America's Hitler" in 2016, JD Vance is now vice president. And routinely seeks to show his Trumpiness. That's almost every Republican now.
• Stage 6: Purge. Actively work to oust anyone who disagrees. You either fully accept and amplify, or get exiled. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — gone. This year alone, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) was beaten in a Trump-backed primary, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) chose retirement over humiliation, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) drew a primary challenger (and lost to him) after voting with Trump 99% of the time.

Zoom out and in: With socialism, the Democratic base moved first, as the base always does. Gallup found last year that Democrats viewed socialism more positively than capitalism by 24 points — the widest gap on record, and sharpest among younger voters.

• All three candidates New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed won their June 23 House primaries, defeating two incumbents: Brad Lander over Rep. Dan Goldman, Claire Valdez over Brooklyn's borough president, and Darializa Avila Chevalier over Rep. Adriano Espaillat — the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair, backed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
• Sit with that: A Jeffries-endorsed incumbent lost to a democratic socialist. That's Stage 4 machinery switching on, with the primary electorate punishing the establishment side of the fight.
• It's not just New York. In Colorado, 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros toppled 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette, who leans progressive.

Now listen to the language: "It's not socialism, it's affordability" is the left's "It's not the tweets, it's the judges." Textbook early sign of Stage 3.

• Bill Daley — former Commerce Secretary and White House chief of staff — told us Democrats can't rationalize a candidate saying: "Oh, I didn't mean it when I said or agreed with a crazy idea a while ago." Instead, Daley said, they need to aggressively denounce "out-of-mainstream ideas and plans," and go after actual socialists by "shoving that platform up their noses."
• In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal warning Dems of the "Tea-Party Trap" that befell the GOP, Daley wrote: "Democrats are fooling themselves if they think a similar hijacking can't happen to their party."

The counterpoint: Socialism is widely seen by most elected Democrats as political poison. So this moment could prove fleeting. Four reasons for this:

1. Socialism has no enforcer yet. Trump ended careers personally. An idea can't, unless someone becomes the idea. Mamdani endorsing, campaigning and toppling incumbents is what an enforcer looks like in beta. But it's hard to see Bernie Sanders or AOC taking this national.
2. The far left has no Fox News synchronizing base and elites. In fact, it's safe to assume The New York Times, The Atlantic and MS NOW will resist socialism, at least initially. But watch for the formation of a media ecosystem to counter them. Politics is downstream from information flow and currents.
3. Transmission is slower. Democratic voters, broadly speaking, are institutionalists. Republican voters wanted demolition. Submission to an insurgency may have a lower ceiling on the left.
4. Socialists need to clear general-election hurdles, as Trump did. If socialist nominees cost Democrats swing seats in November, expect the Iraq-style reversal and recoil to come roaring back.

What to watch:

1. The language: Do swing-district Democrats start saying "democratic socialist" without flinching or keep laundering it as "affordability"? Laundering means Stage 3.
2. The endorsement lag: How long do Jeffries and Chuck Schumer stall on Mamdani-wing nominees this fall? Jeffries' slow-walk on Mamdani himself last year was textbook squint.
3. The Liz Cheney test: Does a Democrat lose a primary specifically for attacking the socialist wing? That's the Stage 4 gateway.
4. Copycat: Do 2028 hopefuls adopt the rent freezes and public groceries they mocked in 2019? Stage 5: Language + policies.
5. Retirements: Do moderate Democrats retire rather than adapt?

That's Stage 6 starting.

📱 Share this video ... Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

• 📈 If you're a CEO or on a CEO's team: Ask to join Jim's new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.

Go deeper ... Behind the Curtain: The cost of blind loyalty.