Max Boot has been a voice on the political right for a long time. I have seldom agreed with him. But I agree with him on his opinion of the modern Republican Party. He writes in The Washington Post:
You can debate when the GOP’s road to ruin began. I believe it was more than a half century ago, when Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon showed their willingness to pander to racists to wrest the segregationist South from the Democrats. The party’s descent accelerated with the emergence of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Fox News in the 1990s, of Sarah Palin in the 2000s, and of Ted Cruz and the tea party in the 2010s. There were still figures of integrity and decency such as John McCain, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. But the GOP evinced no more enthusiasm for any of them than it had for George H.W. Bush. With the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the party’s plunge into purgatory picked up momentum.
Under Trump the party has fallen to its absolute nadir:
Republicans now found themselves making excuses for a boorish, ignorant demagogue who had no respect for the fundamental norms of democracy and no adherence to conservative principles. The party of fiscal conservatism excused a profligate president who added $2 trillion in debt and counting. The party of family values became cheerleaders for what Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has witheringly and accurately called the “porn star presidency.” The party of law and order became accomplices to the president’s obstruction of justice. The party of free trade did nothing to stop the president from launching trade wars. The party of moral clarity barely uttered a peep at the president’s sickening sycophancy toward the worst dictators on the planet — or his equally nauseating attacks on America’s closest allies. The party that once championed immigration eagerly joined in the president’s xenophobic attacks on refugee caravans. And the party that long castigated Democrats for dividing Americans by race pretended not to notice — or even cheered — when the president made openly racist appeals to white voters.
The Republican Party is now a hollow shell:
Faster and faster went the GOP’s descent into oblivion. Now its bankruptcy is complete. It has no more moral capital left. The Republican Party as we once knew it — as a party of limited government — officially ended on March 14.
That was the day that 41 of 53 Republican senators voted to ratify President Trump’s blatantly unconstitutional and transparently cynical declaration of a national emergency so that he can spend money for a border wall that Congress refuses to appropriate. This comes 16 days after 182 out of 195 House Republicans voted the same way. Only 13 Republicans in the House and 12 in the Senate dared to block this flagrant assault on the Constitution. So only 10 percent of Republicans in Congress have any — any — principles left. By an interesting coincidence, that’s also the percentage of Republican voters who disapprove of Trump. The party of Lincoln — the party that freed the slaves and helped to win the Cold War — is now devoted exclusively to feeding Trump’s insatiable ego and pandering to his endless lust for power.
The story reads like a Greek Tragedy. And it serves to underscore Lord Acton's old axiom: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Actually, it's David Brin who got it precisely right.
Image: quotemaster.org
10 comments:
Max is making progress, but still confuses John "Keating 5" McCain, Mitt "Vulture Fund" Romney and Jeb "Hanging Chad" Bush with figures of integrity and decency.
Cap
Points well taken, Cap. There are degrees of corruption.
To quote Bachmann-Turner Over Drive, "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
Grifter City is now located in the White House, Mac. When the story finally gets told, it'll be a blockbuster.
The decline of the Republican Party, it seems to me, Owen, mirrors general society's decline in the ability to think and assess critically, making it all the more ripe for the demagogues in our midst.
The party survived the Ohio Gang. It survived the asininity of Reagan’s trickle–down and even managed to turn the man into something of a saint. (Arthur Laffer is still serving up the same bullshit and the people are still eating it. And ready for more, they keep eating as Stephen Moore gladly adds to the pile.) It survived Bush-Cheney. The Supreme Court and the "sickening sycophancy" of the proud to be deplorable and the yet to feel deplored will bring them through this one. And unless something miraculous takes place that alters the attention span of the average growing youngster, it will once again thrive.
I agree, Lorne. Whether the con man is Donald Trump or Doug Ford, we've lost our ability to spot a phoney.
So the question has to be asked; why are these Republican Senators and House members voting the way they are? Is it because they are simply voting the way their rich campaign supporters fully expect them to or is it rather because this is what their voters expect of them, in other words this is what ‘America’ has become? Not particularly cheery either way. Mac
All of which doesn't say much, John, for those who call themselves Republicans.
I agree, Mac. Either way, the prospects for the country aren't good. Democracy doesn't work when citizens can't think critically. I apologize for posting this comment so late. Sometimes comments come to my site but not to my email -- which is where I usually see them.
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