The federal Conservatives’ fealty to Pierre Poilievre is puzzling to some. The man never caught on with Canadians, never achieving a decent popularity even when his party was riding high in the polls. And then, under his leadership, the party managed within a few short weeks to convert a commanding lead into an election loss. He appears to be more handicap than benefit for his party.

The major reason for the collapse was the Liberals’ choice of a new leader, one seen by Canadians as highly preferable to his predecessor as well as to Poilievre. A secondary reason was the Trump factor—another party leader that commands the total fealty of his supporters.

I use the term fealty, meaning “loyalty to a lord,” because what we see in these cases goes beyond simple party loyalty.

Another case of misguided fealty turned out to be both a curse to the party and to the country. This story was spelled out in a recent book titled Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The authors chronicle how Joe Biden’s family and friends hid his cognitive decline until too late in the campaign when all became revealed with a pale and slack-jawed president struggling to rebut his mendacious opponent.

The revelation shocked many, including me. I was, and remain, a great admirer of Joe Biden and what I saw pained me. I think he was one of America’s great presidents; with his economic legislation and agency appointments, he was truly making the country great again for working class Americans.

But his day was done, he was simply too frail for a second term, never mind an election campaign. The Democratic insiders were aware of his condition but hid it from the public. It was, as the authors put it, “a fraud committed against the electorate,” and the electorate—along with the rest of us—are paying a heavy price.

And that heavy price leads us to the most abject of fealties, that of members of the Republican Party to Donald Trump.

When Trump first announced he was running for the Republican nomination in 2015, leading members of the party were appalled. Senator Ted Cruz called him a “pathological liar” and “a narcissist,” this after Trump insulted Cruz’s wife and father. Senator Lindsey Graham announced, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.” JD Vance publicly called him an “idiot” and privately compared him to Hitler.

After he won, these critics turned into acolytes. Vance is his vice president. Apparently gestures of servility are now de rigueur at cabinet meetings. Party leaders simply represent the way the party as a whole has become Trump’s instrument. The GOP prostrates itself before a narcissistic felon.

Congress, intended by the American founding fathers to be the strongest arm of the U.S. federal government, now with both houses controlled by Republicans seems to exist for little more than flattering the president. The party of Lincoln has become a party serving a leader with no apparent interest in the constitution. We are seeing how mindless fealty can lead a society into authoritarianism.

Not all political parties carry their loyalty to excess. The federal Liberals recognized that their leader had lost the favour of the public and removed him for a better man. They saved their party for years to come, and, in my biased view, did the rest of us a very great favour. If more parties were as loyal to the public interest as they are to their leader, politics would be much improved, and the people better served.