Some thoughts from recent days on whether the Republican Party has a future

 Here's a mince-no-words declaration of departure from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. This one surprises me a bit. I'd never taken him for a Trumpist, but I didn't know such a clear line in the sand was brewing for him:

In the wake of the trauma of the last two months, two inescapable questions emerge. First, what does it mean to be republican? And second, does the Republican Party represent those values at all any more?

The answers to both have led me to disaffiliate myself from the GOP after the disgrace that took place in Congress last week, with not just tacit but explicit cooperation from party leadership. Granted, in Minnesota, it’s easy to disaffiliate as the state does not have any affiliation attached to its voter registration process, so the only action necessary is to just tell people you’re no longer a member of the party. Still, at this point it’s impossible to act as though Republicans are republican, especially while its leadership makes clear that it doesn’t care one whit about the party’s own foundational principles.

I'm generally inclined to align with his position, but every time I get ready to commit myself to it here or at Precipice, I come across signs of hope, in the form of principled pronouncements from relatively new legislators who are Republicans.

There's Ben Sasse. Now, Ben's come in for a few darts of strong objection since he came to the Senate, most recently for not voting to impeach the VSG last January. But if you really examine his pronouncements on the basics going back to his February 2016 open letter to Trump supporters that he posted on Facebook, you'll see an admirable consistency.

More recently, he spoke candidly about his colleague Josh Hawley:

So Sen. Hawley was doing something that was really dumbass. And I have been clear about that in public and in private since long before he announced that he was going to do this. This was a stunt. It was a terrible, terrible idea. And you don't lie to the American people. And that's what's been going on. The American people have been lied to chiefly by Donald Trump. And lies have consequences. And those consequences are now found in five dead Americans in a Capitol building that's in shambles. And there's a lot of work that has to be done to rebuild, and legislators should not be aiding and abetting those kinds of lies.

There's also Adam Kinzinger, who at present consistently impresses me:

Republican U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger on Thursday called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked to remove President Donald Trump from office, a day after the president's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a harrowing assault on American democracy.

"All indications are that the president has become unmoored, not just from his duty or even his oath, but from reality itself," Kinzinger said in a video he posted on Twitter. 

House member from Michigan Peter Meijer likewise seems to have his head on straight:

We are 24 hours into a new reality. Tuesday I signed on to a letter that was authored by Chip Roy, Ken Buck, Thomas Massie, the Freedom Caucus guys. And then there were plenty of moderates in that mix, there were establishment folks. This ran the gamut, it crossed every sort of internal little caucus division. You had Problem Solvers, Freedom Caucus, and everybody in between. I don't know where that's going to lead, but I was really proud to see a number of folks vote on their principles, taking the heat from constituents, but again, telling them what they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear. Exhibiting some leadership.

And then one of the saddest things is I had colleagues who, when it came time to recognize reality and vote to certify Arizona and Pennsylvania in the Electoral College, they knew in their heart of hearts that they should've voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger.

Now, guys, don't disappoint me.  One of the toughest aspects of getting through the Trump era has been seeing former objects of my admiration jettison their principles. Ted Cruz is Exhibit A. It's the principles for me, and if you guys stray for opportunistic reasons, my enthusiasm for you will fade really fast. 

What about the legal arguments that what Trump did last week doesn't rise to the level of impeachable offense? Jonathan Turley has been vocal about this as has Jeffrey Scott Shapiro. 

Well, okay. If their arguments against impeachment are airtight, and I'm not 100 percent convinced, that leaves us with the 25th Amendment, a tougher sell, especially to the guy who would have to pull the trigger - that is, Mike Pence.

And the plain fact - and I hope the likes of Turley and Shapiro would agree with me on this basic point - is that Trump has to go, now. He's wrecked our basic institutions, debased our standards for discourse, left our allies - and, for that matter, our adversaries and enemies - harboring doubts about American stability, and, to the point of this post, infected the Republican Party with his peculiar brand of recklessness and solipsism, perhaps fatally. 

I think Daren Jonescu's take nicely addresses both the Turley/Shapiro objection to impeachment and the larger question of Trump's fundamental unfitness:

Did Trump know he was inciting insurrection? No. For Donald Trump does not know what insurrection means. He does not know what incitement means. He does not understand the limits of authority or free speech, or the responsibility resting on the shoulders of a man in the seat of power. He does not respect the concept of civil society, and does not even know what such a thing would be. He believes everything he does is part of a grand publicity stunt aimed at aggrandizing the name of Trump and bringing adulation from the unwashed masses, or rather audience. For he was nothing, is nothing, and never could be anything, but a conscienceless showman and self-promoter.

Now, I came across this piece this morning, which revisits that years-old question of whether Ronald Reagan should loom so large over discussions about the future of the Republican Party. Among a fair variety of interested folks, there's been a strong feeling that times have changed so much since the 1980s that reference to Reagan's style and set of concerns is only of limited usefulness. This piece quite unabashedly comes to an opposite conclusion, based on six elements of Reaganism that would stand Republicans - or anybody - in good stead at any time:

1. Tone matters. Be careful of personal conduct. People who regularly denigrate or abuse other people raise questions as to their fitness for office. In the policy world, communication is usually not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The goal of communications is to help shape a consensus for a decision, and using it to demean others makes it harder for some to support you. Reagan occasionally found support from Speaker Tip O’Neill. Trump ended up with nothing from Speaker Pelosi.
2. Inclusivity matters. The advantage of a political philosophy is that a political party becomes a universal party. The Republican Party was founded on a set of ideas rather than individual identity, so people from any background should be welcome. Spend time with constituencies that might not be a natural fit. Reagan’s outreach was universal, shaped by his radio and movie experience. You need to talk with everyone you can. Trump’s approach was insular. The point of a Trump rally was to speak only to the base.
3. International leadership matters. We value alliances and collaboration not because we are naive or because it is an act of charity. We undertake a leadership role because America is safer and more prosperous when we build alliances and reduce trade barriers. Our two great international successes of the past century, World War II and the Cold War, depended on America’s ability to lead a coalition. Reagan set the stage for NAFTA with his call for a “North American Accord.” Trump sided with Bernie Sanders in withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
4. Economic growth matters. Whatever problems we face, from racial disparity to clean energy, will be that much easier to tackle with economic growth. To give Trump credit, he was able to preside over three years of growth. This is arguably the one area where there is an overlap between Reagan’s worldview and Trump’s.
5. Values matter. The first rule of a president should be to act like a president. Behave in a way that makes it easy for people to like you, to want to respect you, and to follow you. Reagan knew he was leading a great nation and reached an approval high of 71 percent according to Gallup. Trump merely asserted greatness, and reached an approval high of 49 percent.
6. Defeats matter. Reagan actually received more votes in the 1976 Republican primaries than did his rival, President Gerald Ford, but the distribution of these votes allowed Ford to be awarded more delegates. Reagan was gracious in defeat, endorsing Ford from the convention podium and campaigning for him in the general election. Accepting defeat showed a level of maturity that allowed Reagan to unify the GOP when he went on to win the nomination four years later. Trump’s bitterness at defeat and his sustained efforts to overturn an election reflect, to put it mildly, a lack of maturity and a willingness to hurt both Republican Party interests and the national interest in pursuit of his personal benefit.

And that's the crux of the question whether the GOP has a future. 

Even before the whole series of events beginning with Barry Goldwater's 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater's 1964 presidential nomination, the subsequent dynamics that led to Reagan's 1980 nomination and his astoundingly successful two terms (and then later developments such as the 1994 Contract With America), the Republican Party was considered the standard-bearer for the federalism that Morrissey discusses in his piece linked above. These are ideas rooted in Madisonian (building on the thought of Locke and Montesquieu) notions of how to maximize freedom and simultaneously ensure order. During Republicans' years in the wilderness between 1964 and, really, 1980 (the Nixon years perhaps being a bit of a respite, except that Nixon was pretty rudderless ideologically and had, well, you know, his share of troubles), National Review held strong, Commentary solidified its neoconservative shift, and The American Spectator was born in a burst of irreverence in an office suite above Betty Jean's candy store on the courthouse square in downtown Bloomngton, Indiana. The Heritage Foundation was founded during that time. 

There were nudges from several directions, and the GOP eventually became truly conservative. 

What are the signs that some kind of understanding of the basic tenets and underlying values of conservatism still exists, at least in remote corners, in our own time of exile?

I'd offer Principles First as proof of such a sign. Also The Bulwark, The Dispatch, and the work of Justin Stapley. 

None of these outlets or people know for sure if the Republican Party has a future. I'm pretty sure they see three basic possible scenarios: The GOP just flat-out dies, it becomes the repository for residual Trumpism (in which case, if you ask me, it winds up flat-out dying anyway), or folks interested in a more traditional understanding of what conservatism is all about make it their own.

I'm a lot of things right now - disgusted, alarmed, doubtful about the GOP's prospects - but I don't despair that conservatism has been strangled by Trumpism. Conservatives has survived four years of derision and ostracism from the MAGA-hat crowd, and we're still here. Every day, more people of every stripe come to see what a poisonous figure and phenomenon Trump and Trumpism have been.

If you're one such person and the progressive alternative doesn't strike you as being a viable way forward, come hang with us. We're having the most important conversations around.