Like many Americans, I enjoy team sports. My interest was spawned when I was very young. In middle school, I played football, baseball, and basketball. Those three team sports earned me the coveted letterman sweater which I wore every day to school, regardless of the weather. It hung in my bedroom closet for years, well past the time I had outgrown it. It was a symbol of the love I had for team sports—a love I share with many Americans. In fact, being part of a team is attractive to nearly everybody. But one must be careful in choosing a team. Let me illustrate why care is required.

Teams pull together to win games. We Americans root for teams and love to be part of a winning team. Maybe that love explains how some of us become lifelong Republicans or Democrats. There is security in the support we receive from—presumably—likeminded people. And, if all Party members pull together, we win. Remember our current President tapped into this psyche when he promised all who joined him that they would win: “there’ll be so much winning you won’t believe it.”

Long before Trump, the Republican Party was dedicated to winning. Even though there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in America, the Party had a plan to win the seats of power. First, deny a Democratic President any victories and excoriate his “liberal” initiatives, even those that represent former Republican policies. Second, win as many State legislatures as possible before the ten-year census, so that Republicans could redraw districts to their advantage. (In all fairness, the Democrats had also practiced gerrymandering for four decades after World War II.) And, finally, use their hard-won legislative advantage to suppress voter turnout of traditionally Democratic voter groups. This strategy allowed them to win control of the House in 2010 while losing the popular vote. Once Republicans took control of the Senate as well, they focused on a legislative agenda that would defeat any Democratic opposition. Their plan worked because they were disciplined, hung together, and won as a team.

But their time in control of Congress suffered the lowest approval rating since such ratings were calculated. Where did the Republican plan go wrong? Given their non-compromising naysaying, they became the “Party of no.” Even though they ran successful propaganda campaigns against Obamacare and other Democratic initiatives, they were unable or unwilling to develop better solutions for healthcare or to support previously Republican proposals on balanced budgets, infrastructure spending, or trade agreements. Their opposition to a Democratic President became an opposition to governing. Winning control of Congress and blocking the nomination of a swing vote on the Supreme Court were victories over the Democrats. But those victories did not immediately translate into constructive legislation. While Republicans were busy winning elections, they were losing credibility with the electorate. And they left their right flank open for Trump. In 2015, Donald Trump started a populist revolution against the elites in Washington. But it was initially a revolution against the Republican Party. When he promised to “drain the swamp,” he meant all of the Washington establishment, which included the governing Republican Party. The lesson here is that politics is not football, which is to say winning can be losing. The 2016 election was a victory for Trump, but a loss for Republicanism.

Donald Trump is the chameleon who once was the color of blue, then turned red, and is only now showing his true color. There was a time when he seemed to support some Democratic positions. He was for a woman’s right to choose and against the Iraq war. But sometime in the last decade, he became a Republican. We can only guess why he made this switch. Perhaps he was motivated by his animus toward Barack Obama or by a growing ambition to stage a Presidential campaign. For whatever reason, he knew the Republican Party had lost the patronage of its supporters. They had become a team with neither a leader nor a positive agenda. All he had to do was cloak himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan. If he became captain of the team—a team only concerned with winning—then, he could call the plays. Traditional Republican policies could be touted, but they would be played for different purposes—to unite the team, win elections, and cement control of political power. No agenda or policy was an end in itself. Repeal and replace Obamacare, for example, was just a ploy. There was never a viable replacement plan. Victory was never measured in health outcomes or the number of insured Americans but in elections won. Even the financial argument against Obamacare was a bust. The legislation that created the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, not only paid for itself, but extended the solvency of Medicare. Trump opportunistically picked up the banner against his predecessor’s healthcare law without a second thought to the effects of its repeal. He never tried to get into the weeds, for his gambit was his brand as the successful billionaire businessman with a Reaganesque flair for policies.

Playing Reagan, however, is not the same as being Reagan. Our 40th President has been the keystone of Republicanism for nearly four decades. When you consider his positions on free trade, immigration, NATO, and Russia’s strategic interests, the current Republican President would seem to be an anomalous Republican. Reagan was not only a free trader, but he would have cringed at the very concept of “zero-tolerance,” tariff wars, or obsequious rapport with a Russian kleptomaniac. (I apologize to my Russian readers, but Putin’s vast wealth far exceeds his government income.) But on other issues, Trump does tow the party line, conforming at least in theory to Reagan’s positions by mirroring his policies on lowering taxes, on restricting the government bureaucracy, on proposing the elimination of the Department of Education, on opposing universal healthcare proposals, on fighting the proliferation of drugs, on advocating tougher penalties on crimes including capital punishment, on denying abortion as a woman’s right, and on dismissing any environmental concerns, which in Reagan’s day was just for acid rain. On these Reaganite initiatives, Trump’s only “successes” would be in hamstringing the Environmental Protection Agency, in eliminating or watering-down both EPA and financial regulations, and in lowering taxes.

Many would add to his Reaganesque successes his ongoing fight to repeal Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But reducing subsidies, hampering the risk pool, limiting support for ACA registration, repealing the mandate, and eliminating funding for key HHS support services have not reduced subscriptions. Instead, it has resulted in significant increases in healthcare insurance costs for everyone. And the President’s tax plan risks the nation’s fiscal stability and misses one of the key lessons-learned of the Reagan years. After Reagan initiated a large reduction in the top tax rate in his first year from 70% to 28%, he was forced to raise taxes on eleven occasions to fund the arms race and pay down a growing national debt that mushroomed from 1.1 trillion to over 2.7 trillion. His greatest regret on leaving the Presidency was the effect his tax policy had on the national debt. Except for Bush 41, Trump seems to follow in the footsteps of a long line of Republican Presidents who talk of fiscal conservatism but produce huge national debts for future Administrations to remedy or suffer.

The current version of Republicanism shows none of the Reagan sympathies for immigrants. It fails to learn from the one major failure of the Reagan Presidency, that is, the impact of his tax policy on the national debt. Moreover, the current Republican President has only paid lip service to the other Reaganite policies mentioned above. The point of this iteration is to illustrate the nature of the Republican Party’s fall from grace and the basis for its subjugation to Trump. Many grassroot Republicans revolted against the failures of the “Party of no” and voted for a change agent who seemed to embody the mantle of Reagan. But that red chameleon turned purple—which is, incidentally, the color of royalty. The Republican Party is now the Party of Trump. But Trump is not quarterbacking the team to run up the score for the benefit of the fans or even for the reelection of his Republican teammates. No, Trump wants to secure his position in the political hall of fame and, further, to enhance his power and self-proclaimed stature as a “stable genius” and the “greatest President in history.” His game is not politics, but despotism. In that game, only he can be the winner.

Republicans are afraid of Trump supporters because they may hold the key to the Republican primaries and their possible reelection. But they need to break with their quarterback, for he is not playing in their behalf. He does not follow the norms and rules of American politics or government. Instead, he uses campaign-style rallies and propagandized tweets to rally his supporters. For his aim is not to govern well, but to maintain a cult-like following. If permitted, he would disenfranchise Democratic voters with his proposed voter fraud commission. What he really wants is power to deconstruct our government’s institutions and reorient them to serve his personal whims and interests. If he holds onto his position, he will continue to disengage America from its leadership in international affairs. And, if he ever does “make a deal” on the world stage, it will not be in the service of America’s national interests but in the aggrandizement of his prestige, power, and/or personal wealth. His Republican teammates will simply become complicit in the devolution of America unless they overthrow his leadership and save the Republican Party from infamy.

The American people are the referees in this game. They know a foul has been committed. While reporters and political sages point to the quarterback, what are ordinary people saying? Do they say, “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Trump? Or do they say, “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be” Trump? The first question implies there is no evidence of or intent to commit a foul. The second question implies there is no evidence to exonerate him of the foul. In the first instant, the referees review the video replay. The video evidence indicts the quarterback as guilty. In the second instant, common sense indicts the quarterback as the only one who could have committed the foul precisely because he was the quarterback, not an innocent bystander. If you left your dog in the kitchen to answer the phone in the next room, upon your return who do you think ate the steak on the kitchen counter?

Trump has fouled a lot of things in his brief time in the Presidency. But Team Republican has made his foulness possible. Trump cannot change who he is. The question remains, however, whether Republicans will continue to be complicit. Will they support America first or their Party leader? Where is their loyalty???