Opinion | What it means that no Republican is responding to Pete Hegseth’s allegations

Why don’t more Republican senators oppose Pete Hegseth’s nomination for Secretary of Defense? second marriage?

The obvious answer is party loyalty. In 1989, President George HW Bush chose John Tower, a former Republican senator from Texas, as secretary of defense. Like Hegseth, he was a military veteran who was accused of abusing women and drinking heavily. Unlike Hegseth, he had first-class experience in defense matters, including as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

A history of heavy drinking should be disqualifying for almost any leadership position, let alone one with responsibilities as extensive and consequential as that of the Pentagon. Still, only one Republican senator – Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas – voted 47-53 against Tower, who suffered defeat. If Hegseth’s candidacy, which could be voted on as early as Friday, is opposed by a Republican, the majority will likely come from another independent-minded woman, Susan Collins of Maine.

(Through his lawyer, Hegseth has denied his former sister-in-law’s claims and also denied that he has problems with alcohol. In a statement to NBC News, his ex-wife said, “There was no physical abuse in my marriage.”)

In Hegseth’s case, the power of party loyalty is reinforced by three other factors: fear of Trump, the MAGA cult, and the boomerang effect of liberal contempt.

As for the first, at least Kassebaum didn’t have to fear a social media backlash from Bush, and Bush would have been too much of a gentleman to do more than privately fret about her vote. Today, any Republican senator who opposes Trump risks not only public ridicule and disparagement from the president, but also the threat of a primary challenge.

Then there’s the MAGA cult, whose bro culture Hegseth embodies: the big tattoos, the womanizing and the fervent Christian piety. When Hegseth questions the ability of women to serve in combat or when he is quoted as saying he once drunkenly shouted, “Kill all Muslims!” Kill all Muslims!” (Hegseth said last week that it was an anonymous false accusation), but it doesn’t tarnish his star in the MAGA world. Instead, it signals that he is reliable. That’s a commitment that neither Trump nor most of the GOP caucus wants to mess with.

But nothing will convince Republican senators to support Hegseth more than the flood of contempt now pouring out of the organs of the supposed establishment. In December, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer published a damning expose about Hegseth. In another time (say 10 years ago) the article would have destroyed his chances. Instead, it revived a candidacy that had briefly looked dead when it arrived in the Senate. Similar unflattering coverage from other news organizations only further encouraged his comeback.

That doesn’t mean journalists shouldn’t do our jobs. It just means that in this moral and intellectual climate we shouldn’t expect it to make a political difference.