Donald Trump, as we all know, has never been able to command a majority of support within his own political party, let alone the entire nation. Save for Neil Gorsuch's appointment to the Supreme Court, and the midnight ride of the tax-cutters, he has no serious legislative accomplishments toward which he can point with pride. And even among the conservative chattering classes, there are many members who not only openly despise him in terms that are inseparable from those used by their Democratic counterparts, but who surprisingly argue that his presidency may very well prove to be the beginning of the end of the Republican Party. In a nutshell, they make alternatively the case that Trump will either permanently associate Republicans with corruption of the worst sort, and/or that he will permanently associate the party with white nationalism at the expense of identifying it with more saleable ideas (e.g., limited government, personal responsibility, etc.).
You can find any number of examples of this line of reasoning in social media, especially on Twitter, coming from such conservative luminaries as Bill Kristol, Bruce Bartlett, Jennifer Rubin, and David Frum. Kristol, in particular, has been especially vehement in his disdain for Trump, going so far as to say that people who want to leave the GOP as a consequence of his occupying the Oval Office should not look to him to stop them. Kristol would prefer, and has advocated for, the emergency of a third party that would embrace so-called true "Reagan principles," again, small-government-except-for-defense, hawkish foreign policy, conservative religious views, and so forth. Two writers have even gone so far as to suggest that conservative voters consciously vote against Republicans in this fall's midterms, as the only hope of preserving the hope for a party that (ta-da, once again!) will uphold conservative values.
I suppose that I should look at these signs of a potential dissolution of the GOP as a source of joy and enthusiasm, a sign that the political universe in this country is moving toward some sort of harmonic convergence in which Democrats and Republicans can once again find ways to work together for the greater good of the nation. And a naive, idealistic part of me would actually like to do so.
That part of me might have won out as recently as twenty years ago. The more pragmatic, experienced-hardened part of me finds the whole concept very easy to reject.
Small government? Look at the ballooning of the national debt over nearly 40 years of uninterrupted Republican political thinking. Triumphant military? Three words: Iraq and Afghanistan. Christian values? Five words: Jimmy Swaggert and the Bakkers. And those last five words, of course, have had five more added to them by the current "President": Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.
Let's sum all of this up by asking this: when we follow the advice of the late Governor of New York, Al Smith, and look at the record, do we actually see a series of anything that look like "principles" in action?
No. What we see instead are two things that have defined the modern rise of the
Republican /conservative movement: abuses of power, and white nationalism. The former can be found in almost an unbroken line, from Teapot Dome to Sherman Adams to Watergate to Iran-Contra to the Florida recount, all the way up to not only the Russian interference with the last presidential election, but the naked theft of a Supreme Court seat that preceded it. (Incidentally, I don't recall many of the current crop of "dissenters" objecting vehemently to that one.) The latter can be found in the so-called "Southern strategy" of Richard Nixon, which was recycled by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, before it reached Olympian heights of perfection under Trump.
So, to those who argue from the right about how Trump has spoiled the Republican Party, I ask, in the words of the late John Anderson, a moderate Republican back in the days when it was possible to be such an animal, "What's there to spoil?"
Maybe a better question to ask is this.
Do you conservative critics of all things Trump have what it takes to return to the American people the fruits of the poisonous tree? To allow Merrick Garland a chance to take the place on the Supreme Court that Gorsuch, with a lot of help from Mitch McCONnell, usurped? To repeal and replace (to borrow your Obamacare words) the rancid excuse for tax reform you enacted at the end of last year with a bill crafted the way tax reform was crafted during Reagan's second term? On a bipartisan basis, with give-and-take on both sides?
Or, if a Democratic wave in 2018 truly does leave Trump as the last Republican standing in a position of power, will you forswear allegiance to him as you do now, and work with the victors to re-establish a truly ethical government that is fully and promptly responsive to the peoples' needs. Or will you go back to putting party first, put a "just kidding" sign next to all of your posts and articles of the past several months, and become the sharks filling the shrinking moat around the Trump White House?
Maybe we don't even have to wait until November to get an idea of how sincere your denounciations have been, up until now.
Among the dissatisfied Republicans in Congress at the moment are two Senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Collins is upset that McCONnell has not kept a promise to vote on a fix for Obamacare subsidies, in exchange for her voting yes (as in fact she did) in favor of the midnight tax scam. Flake, on the other hand, is upset over the unwillingness of his party to support legislation providing a straight-up pairing of immigration relief to young foreign nationals brought here without documentation at an early age, in exchange for enhanced border security, and without any additional measures to restrict legal immigration. As I said, they're both upset about these things. Or so they say.
Well, Susan and Jeff, why not put a little meat on the bones of your displeasure? Why stand around whining but still staying true to Team Red? Why not do what another dissatisfied Republican Senator, Jim Jeffords, did a few years earlier when he found himself in a similar situation?
No, he didn' switch parties. He became an independent. Not just as a label. He actually registered as an independent, and caucused with the Democrats, so that he could talk to people who were not only willing to actually listen to him, but even to respond in a positive way to what he had to say.
If both of you were willing to do this, together, simultaneously, and shift the balance of power away from the awful, unbearable Trump, without sacrificing anything you actually believe in, well, then, maybe, just maybe, I'll think there's some fire behind the smoke of conservative objections to The Donald.
But, until then, and certainly until the midterms, I reserve the right to be skeptical as hell
No comments:
Post a Comment