As I have watched the relationship between Donald Trump and the Republican party develop over the past few years, I have been reminded of a psychological phenomenon sometimes referred to as the Ben Franklin Effect.
Franklin famously wrote, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged." Put another way, we are more likely to do someone a big favor when we’ve already done them a smaller, unrelated favor.
Many establishment Republicans initially recoiled from Trump’s coarse, offensive language. (For example, there were many public repudiations of his claim that he could simply grab women “by the p----”.