There's no place for principle, character or spine in the 2022 Republican Party

 Last month, at Precipice, I summarized the challenge that I've had as a cultural observer since the insertion of a new force in our nation's politics since 2015:

When I started opining on culture, politics, economics and world affairs online, and in a column I wrote for several years for our local newspaper, the lines of demarcation were more clear-cut. There was right, and there was left. I expended a great many keyboard strokes trying to get people to see that Barack Obama was a lurch leftward beyond any that had come before for the Democrats. Frank Marshall Davis, Rashid Khalidi, the Midwest Academy, Bill Ayers and all that. The task before conservatives (back when that term stood for something recognizable) was straightforward: explain and defend our glorious lineage, from Edmund Burke through Frederic Bastiat, Richard M. Weaver, Russell Kirk, National Review and on up to Reaganite fusionism, and point out the dark nature of the lineage on the other side.

It’s all quite different now, isn’t it? Yes, the Left has grown increasingly grotesque, but an entirely new element has upended everyone’s previous assumptions . . .

That’s why any pundit, let alone fundraiser or political candidate who focuses solely on the very real grotesqueness of the Democrats - “We’ll defeat these leftists and then everything will be alright” - must be viewed with suspicion. Such a figure wants you to ignore the at least equally monstrous malignancy on the Right.

Now, the governor of Florida has illustrated exactly that kind of smokescreening maneuver:

"Liz Cheney is just totally off the rails with her nonsense," DeSantis said during an interview Monday with Fox News Digital. "And I think she's not really a Republican in terms of terms of what she's doing. We want people that are going to fight the left, and that's what we need to do in this country. That's what we're doing in Florida, standing up for people's freedoms. We're opposing wokeness. We're opposing all these things." 

A tactic closely akin to the the-Left-is-all-we-have-to-oppose ploy is whataboutism taking the form of "but there was urban violence in 2020." That's how Elise Stefanik, who assumed Liz Cheney's number three position in House Republican leadership, even thou her voting record has been far less consistently conservative that Cheney's, has chosen to obscure the 800-pound gorilla in the room:

“House Democrats did not condemn the violence that happened all of 2020,” she said in reference to riots in some cities following the murder of George Floyd in police custody. “And we believe the January 6 commission is political theater.” 

Sorry, Madame Conference Chair, but that's a non-sequitur. It's not the subject at hand. 

Then there's the dragging-our-brand-across-the-finish-line-is-far-and-away-our-primary-mission approach, as exemplified by Nikki Haley in response to a question from Bret Baier on FNC's Special Report:

“Mike Pence is a good man,” Haley said. “He’s an honest man. I think he did what he thought was right on that day. But I will always say, I’m not a fan of Republicans going against Republicans.”

Donald Trump has, of course, been breaking people who once prided themselves on being animated by principle since he entered the political fray. What a lifetime ago it seems when 

Lindsey Graham characterized the Very Stable Genius thusly:

"If Donald Trump carries the banner of my party," Graham said, "I think it taints conservatism for generations to come. I think his campaign is opportunistic, race-baiting, religious bigotry, xenophobia. Other than that, he’d be a good nominee."

and Rick Perry put it like this:

"Let no one be mistaken Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded," Perry said during a speech in Washington, D.C. "It cannot be pacified or ignored for it will destroy a set of principles that has lifted more people out of poverty than any force in the history of the civilized world and that is the cause of conservatism."

and Ted Cruz, full of righteous indignation, said this:

“This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth,” Cruz told reporters in Evansville, Indiana.

The Hoosier State primary is crucial for Cruz’s goal of preventing Trump from gaining enough delegates to secure the GOP presiential nomination. Most polls show Trump with a lead in the state, and Cruz’s attacks against his rival on Tuesday went into his personal life in a way Trump’s opponents have largely avoided until now.

“Donald Trump is a serial philanderer and he boasts about it,” Cruz said. “This is not a secret, he is proud of being a serial philanderer." 

The only people left in the Republican Party interested in having any personal honor almost certainly have no future in it. They don't even respect each other. They each and all know that they opted to be motivated by fear of a four-year-old in a 76-year-old man's body. 

They claim to be so concerned about the impact of progressive aggression on the foundations of the American way of life, but deep inside they know they've chosen a path that is utterly ineffective in addressing it.

The entire party, save for the handful of outliers with no voice in it, is in the throes of a delusion borne of cowardice. 

 

 

 

 

It doesn't appear there's going to be any moving on from Trump or Trumpism for the GOP

 The Very Stable Genius is ensconced at Mar-a-Lago, with considerably fewer means of communication at his disposal than he had a few weeks ago, but he can still issue statements on a letterhead that looks strikingly similar to the official seal of a current US president. 

On such a sheet of paper, he let loose with a blast of vitriol against Mitch McConnell that also included, for good measure, yet another round of don't-forget-how-many-votes-I-got-and-what-good-shape-the-economy-was-in-before-the-pandemic braggadocio:

Former President Donald Trump fired back at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday, releasing a scathing statement after McConnell published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal blaming him for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Trump said in a written statement. “McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse.”

He wasn't done grinding Mitch into the dust:

“The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle — they’ve never had it so good — and they want to keep it that way! We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last,” Trump said in his statement, adding, “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country.”

And then comes this low blow:

Trump also went after McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao, his own former secretary of transportation, insinuating that her family’s business presented a conflict of interest.

“Likewise, McConnell has no credibility on China because of his family’s substantial Chinese business holdings. He does nothing on this tremendous economic and military threat,” Trump said in the statement without clarifying why, given those circumstances, he had appointed her to his Cabinet in the first place.

Chao resigned her position two days after the Capitol riot, which she called “entirely avoidable.” 

Granted, McConnell hasn't exactly delivered a consistent message that would bolster a bold-leader image, what with his rhetoric - before the convict/acquit vote, immediately afterward, and in the WSJ op-ed - being glaringly at odds with his actual vote:

As Yogi Berra might say, when McConnell came to a fork in the road, he took it.

McConnell’s theory is that he can have it both ways: Simultaneously denounce Trump and provide him cover in the hope of reconciling the divisions in the party that cannot be reconciled. McConnell, though as shrewd as they come, will fail to satisfy both Republican and independent voters — and donors — horrified by Trump and the movement of those who want Trumpist populism to define the party.

McConnell’s choice is emblematic of the GOP’s rot. Republicans claim to fight for fidelity to the Constitution, traditional morality, law and order, economic liberty, fiscal responsibility, etc. As a conservative, I believe these are things worth fighting for. But most Republicans today don’t see these as principles to stand for, they see them as slogans to campaign on.

I recently wrote a post about the censure-mania that has broken out among state-level Republican parties. Since then, I've come across this pronouncement from a Pennsylvania GOP leader, regarding Pat Toomey's vote, that expresses the majority sentiment in the party when it comes to fealty to Trump versus any other consideration:

A Pennsylvania GOP official became the subject of online mockery Tuesday after bashing Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) for voting to convict former President Donald Trump during the impeachment trial last week.

Washington County GOP chair Dave Ball, during an interview with local CBS affiliate KDKA, said Pennsylvania voters didn’t send Toomey to Washington to “vote his conscience” and should have stood by Trump.

Lindsey Graham is an example of a different type of Trump-era Republican. He's never expected anybody to give more than surface-deep heed to his so-called positions. In 2016, he called the Very Stable Genius a xenophobe and bigot whose nomination would destroy the party. He's now got a diametrically opposed message:

Instead of defending Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from Donald Trump’s scathing rebuke on Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went on Hannity to tell the Senate Minority Leader that he should just accept Trumpism as the future of the Republican Party. 

“I know Trump can be a handful,” Graham told the Fox News host, “but he is the most dominant figure in the Republican Party. We don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of taking back the majority without Donald Trump.”

Calling Trump a “hell of a president on all of the things that conservatives really believe in,” he added, “I’m sorry what happened on January 6th. He’ll get his fair share of blame, but to my Republican colleagues in the Senate, let’s try to work together and realize that without President Trump, we’re never going to get back in the majority.”

I'm still unwilling to put myself on record here or at Precipice as writing off a future for the Republican Party with finality. I'm well aware of the resources - donor money, on-the-ground volunteers, precinct committees and county parties, enlistment of viable candidates for offices at all levels - needed to build a party that cn truly contend on the national level.

But I'm nearly there. I honestly don't see how a party this poisoned by a cult of personality can build the "big tent" of which it speaks, especially considering that the Trumpists have no use for actual conservatives.

If the GOP must be abandoned to the slavish devotees of Donald Trump, let the break be clean. And let us articulate why it happened in a way that any even minimally engaged citizen can understand.