This Republican Party Is Not Worth Saving

Source: The Atlantic | September 10, 2020 | Tom Nichols

No one should ever get a second chance to destroy the Constitution.

I was a Republican for most of my adult life. I came of political age in 1980, and although I grew up in a working-class Democratic stronghold in Massachusetts, I found a home in Ronald Reagan’s GOP. Back then, the Republicans were a confident “party of ideas” (a compliment bestowed on them by one of their foes, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York), optimistic boosters of the American dream at home, and fierce opponents of the Soviet Union overseas. While the Democrats were the party of recrimination and retreat, the Republicans were the party of the future.

I understand the attachment to that GOP, even among those who have sworn to defeat Donald Trump, but the time for sentimentality is over. That party is long gone. Today the Republicans are the party of “American carnage” and Russian collusion, of scams, plots, and weapons-grade contempt for the rule of law. The only decent, sensible, and conservative position is to vote against this Republican Party at every level, and bring the sad final days of a once-great political institution to an end. Then build the party back up again—from scratch.

I’m not advocating for voting against the GOP merely to punish Republicans for Trump’s existence in their party. Rather, conservatives must finally accept that at this point Trump and the Republican Party are indistinguishable. Trump and his circle have gutted the old GOP and stuffed its empty husk with the Trump family’s paranoia and corruption.

Indeed, the transformation of the GOP into a cult of personality is so complete that the Republicans didn’t even bother presenting a platform at their own convention. Like a group of ciphers at a meeting of SPECTRE, they nodded at whatever Number One told them to do, each of them fearing an extended pinkie finger pressing the button that would electrocute them into political oblivion.

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But Trump’s few conservative achievements are meaningless when compared with his war on American democracy, a rampage that few Republicans have lifted a finger to stop. Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr have turned the constitutional order and the rule of law into a joke. If you’re Roger Stone or Michael Flynn, the White House will arrange pardons, commutations, or even the outright betrayal of the Justice Department’s own lawyers. Felony convictions are for the little people. The Constitution is just busywork for chumps.

GOP representatives in the people’s house sneer at concepts such as oversight and the separation of powers. Rather than demand accountability from the executive branch on COVID-19, on the Hatch Act, on the Postal Service—on anything, really—they either repose in sullen silence or they take up the lance for the president and overwhelm committee hearings with Trumpian word salad.

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Conservatives must also let go of fantasies about saving the “good” Republicans, a list that is virtually nonexistent. (You can’t count Mitt Romney more than once.) The occasional furrowed brow—a specialty of the feckless Susan Collins of Maine—is not enough. The few, like Romney, who have dared grasp at moments of sanity have been pilloried by Trump and other Republicans. In any case, Romney is chained to the GOP caucus, a crew that includes the jabbering Louie Gohmert and calculating Elise Stefanik in the House, and the sniveling Ted Cruz and amoral Mitch McConnell in the Senate.

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Reconstructing the GOP—or any center-right party that might one day replace it—will take a long time, and the process will be painful. The remaining opportunists in the GOP will try to avert any kind of reform by making a last-ditch lunge to the right to fill the vacuum left by Trump’s culture warring and race-baiting. In the short term, the party might become smaller and more extreme, even as it loses seats. So be it. The hardening of the GOP into a toxic conglomeration of hucksters, quislings, racists, theocrats, and cultists is already happening. The party gladly accepted support from white supremacists and the Russian secret services, and now welcomes QAnon kooks into its caucus. Conservatives must learn that the only way out of “the wilderness” is first to vanquish those who led them there.

No person should ever get a second chance to destroy the Constitution. Trump has brought the United States to the brink of civil catastrophe, and the Republican Party has protected him from the consequences of all his immoral and illegal actions more ably than even Fred Trump did. Conservatives need to put the current Republican Party out of its—and our—misery.

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  • Discussion
  • Consistent September 12, 2020 at 1:04 pm #42838

    EVERYDAY September 12, 2020 at 4:50 pm #42842

    The party had been going downhill since President Reagan left office. Trump’s presidency will finish it off. The GOP had a chance to redeem itself when Trump was impeached It chose to hang its hat on a fraud, liar and incompetent instead.

    Trump is going down, and he’s taking the Republican Party with him. When that happens, I will shed no tears. The GOP will have brought its ruin upon itself.

    ConservativeGranny September 12, 2020 at 11:37 pm #42845

    It sounds like he is advocating for a rehab. Why would you want to associate yourself with the name Republican or GOP (Grand Old Party). Why re-construct? Start from scratch and form a new truly conservative and constitutional party and for pity’s sake, change the name. Leave the liars, grifters and corrupt sycophants with their shameful party affiliation attached to them. The name Republican and GOP has been forever sullied. I know I wouldn’t want anything to do with it. There is nothing there worth salvaging. I’ll remain an Independent. I’ve seen what party loyalty looks like. It’s not pretty.

    EVERYDAY September 13, 2020 at 2:11 pm #42850

    Been advocating for a constitutionally conservative party for years, but I was always told third parties fail largely because they can’t raise the funds to mount effective campaigns. It seems most of us, but especially big money donors, are stuck on one or the other of the two parties. Why, I don’t know. Certainly, there is no constitutional provision mandating only two parties. Maybe in order to have a truly effective conservative party, it will be necessary for the GOP to go under.

    Consistent September 13, 2020 at 5:04 pm #42853

    Consistent September 13, 2020 at 5:07 pm #42854

    Consistent September 13, 2020 at 5:08 pm #42855

    Consistent September 13, 2020 at 5:11 pm #42856

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