Steve Schmidt returned to MSNBC last week, having spent eight months consulting with Howard Schultz regarding a presidential campaign by the billionaire, and his criticism of Donald Trump is as sharp and on target as ever. It is great fun to read (or listen to) this never-Trumper, who left the Republican Party last year (“Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.“). He has Trump’s number.

But he is still whitewashing the complicity — pre-Trump — of the Republican Party in what it has become.

“Voting in America for a substantial part of the population is no longer about affirming a belief in the future, it’s an act of aggression. It’s an action taken to choose someone to punish their enemies. And that more than anything is how Trump has redefined American politics. Not even the pretense of unity.“

And:

“My perspective is that the Republican party is profoundly corrupted by Donald Trump and it has been corrupted by a tolerance for all and any type of amoral and immoral behavior. Tolerance for astounding levels of corruption and exposure of hypocrisy from the religious far-right leaders like Falwell, to everybody who screamed and shouted about some perfidious act that Obama or the Clintons allegedly committed. Trump has remade the Republican party into an isolationist, grievance-driven, resentment-driven political party. The party looks like what it might have looked like if George Wallace had captured its nomination and become president.”

Strike the word ‘isolationist’ from Schmidt’s indictment. While individual Republicans — John McCain, whom Schmidt advised, stands out — might have stood for more than grievance-driven and resentment-driven politics, these strands were deeply embedded in the contemporary Republican Party long before Trump’s ride down the escalator.

I’ll grant that George W. Bush (whom Schmidt also advised) gave us a bit more than “the pretense of unity.” But the GOP establishment in Washington repudiated Bush’s outreach to ethnic and religious minorities (which was the most significant element of Bush’s electoral strategy that made unity more than a pretense). This Republican pushback came years before Trump became a candidate. To put it bluntly: the party resisted unity.

And Schmidt’s post-Trump indictment doesn’t even make sense on its own terms: “Tolerance for astounding levels of corruption and exposure of hypocrisy from the religious far-right leaders like Falwell, to everybody who screamed and shouted about some perfidious act that Obama or the Clintons allegedly committed.”

The unhinged screaming and shouting about Obama and the Clintons cannot possibly be placed at the feet of Donald Trump. George W. Bush couldn’t have come close enough to steal the 2000 election (even granting Bill Clinton’s sleazy behavior) without the far right’s bizarre tales of murder and more. And Donald Trump didn’t found the Tea Party or advise Mitch McConnell on his scorched earth opposition to Barack Obama.

So, I’m with Schmidt on his repudiation of Trump and the post-Trump Republican Party. But the GOP’s corruption and hypocrisy have been flourishing for more than a generation. Trump didn’t remake the Republican Party. He is just the most recent step in an ugly evolution.

(Image: MSNBC.)