THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS ROTTING

By Ronald T. Fox

My parents were life-long Republicans—or nearly life-long. My father in 2008, nearing his ninth decade of living, voted Democrat for the first—and only--time. He had been alienated from the GOP by the party’s cheer leading for the wealthy, George W. Bush’s fictitious weapons of mass destruction, and “that little smirk” Bush seemed to always have on his public face. In retribution, he joined the ranks of the ‘independents,” noting that he didn’t much like either party. He would not vote for a president in 2016.

My political journey was a bit different. In my early years, I recall liking Dwight Eisenhower, mostly because of his smile and the fact that he played golf. I didn’t consider myself a Republican, however, because, well, they had the eminently unlikable Richard Nixon a heart beat away. I recall being generally apolitical, as were most of my friends in what, for white folks at least, were the tranquil fifties.

Like many others, I received a brisk political and social education in the turbulent 1960’s. I realized that my personal values connected best with the political left, which was championing civil rights and freedoms, economic and social equality, and international peace. My turn to the left was accelerated by the terrible injustices exposed by the civil rights movement and the human tragedy in Vietnam, which opened my eyes to not only the reality of death and destruction, but also to an awareness of how far the United States had strayed from its founding ideals. After a brief flirtation with the Peace and Freedom Party, I resigned myself to register Democrat.

The Republican Party became “the other.” I found the blind faith most Republicans had in the efficacy of the unfettered free market not only historically unjustified, but mean-spirited, their lack of regard for our neediest citizens shameful, and their hawkishness on foreign policy dangerous. I was repulsed by their pandering to the wealthy. At the same time, however, I thought it important that their voice be heard in the political arena. Republican concern for the excesses of government resonated with millions of Americans. They deserved a seat at the political table.

But this was a different Republican Party than the one that carries the name today. Partisan differences, and even a brief flirtation with conservative extremism during the Goldwater years, didn’t prevent the party from working with Democrats on the most pressing social and political issues of the day. Compromise was something to be sought, not avoided at all costs, which is now all too familiar.  GOP support was essential for the landmark legislation passed in the 1960's and 1970's: on voting and civil rights, gender equality, environmental and health and safety protections, and social programs for the needy.

Sadly, Republican willingness to cross the aisle didn’t last. The party took a radical turn to the right and is now a party of wealth, hate, bigotry, divisiveness, inhumanity and hypocrisy. It has become a party that plays loose with facts, violates our most fundamental democratic values, and has lost any semblance of a moral compass. RNC endorsement of the predatory misogynist Roy Moore represents a new low for how far the party is willing to stoop to hold on to power, which it uses to aggrandize fat cats and impose its evangelical brand of morality.*  

I thought about writing about my revulsion to what the Republican Party has become, and even started to sketch out some thoughts, but then I read David Brooks’ December 7 New York Times op-ed titled “The GOP is Rotting.” Brooks’ opinion piece perfectly captures my thoughts, and I’m sure those of millions of other disillusioned Americans alarmed by Republican Party challenges to our cherished democratic values and ideals.

The Brooks piece has been widely circulated, so it’s likely many Phronesis readers have read it; regardless, I’m including it below as a guest commentary. It should be read by all Americans.

Brooks calls himself a moderate Republican, the kind I remember from my younger days. Sadly, he’s a vanishing breed.

* There are a number of excellent academic histories that focus on how the GOP came to be the voice of right-wing extremism.  Two of the best are:  Geoffrey Kabaservice, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party; and, Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.



Opinion | Op-Ed Columnist

The G.O.P. Is Rotting

David Brooks,   NYT, Dec. 7, 2017

A lot of good, honorable Republicans used to believe there was a safe middle ground. You didn’t have to tie yourself hip to hip with Donald Trump, but you didn’t have to go all the way to the other extreme and commit political suicide like the dissident Jeff Flake, either. You could sort of float along in the middle, and keep your head down until this whole Trump thing passed.

Now it’s clear that middle ground doesn’t exist. That’s because Donald Trump never stops asking. First, he asked the party to swallow the idea of a narcissistic sexual harasser and a routine liar as its party leader. Then he asked the party to accept his comprehensive ignorance and his politics of racial division. Now he asks the party to give up its reputation for fiscal conservatism. At the same time he asks the party to become the party of Roy Moore, the party of bigotry, alleged sexual harassment and child assault.

There is no end to what Trump will ask of his party. He is defined by shamelessness, and so there is no bottom. And apparently there is no end to what regular Republicans are willing to give him. Trump may soon ask them to accept his firing of Robert Mueller, and yes, after some sighing, they will accept that, too.

That’s the way these corrupt bargains always work. You think you’re only giving your tormentor a little piece of yourself, but he keeps asking and asking, and before long he owns your entire soul.

The Republican Party is doing harm to every cause it purports to serve. If Republicans accept Roy Moore as a United States senator, they may, for a couple years, have one more vote for a justice or a tax cut, but they will have made their party loathsome for an entire generation. The pro-life cause will be forever associated with moral hypocrisy on an epic scale. The word “evangelical” is already being discredited for an entire generation. Young people and people of color look at the Trump-Moore G.O.P. and they are repulsed, maybe forever.

You don’t help your cause by wrapping your arms around an alleged sexual predator and a patriarchic bigot. You don’t help your cause by putting the pursuit of power above character, by worshiping at the feet of some loutish man or another, by claiming the ends justify any means. You don’t successfully rationalize your own tawdriness by claiming your opponents are satanic. You don’t save Christianity by betraying its message.

“What shall it profit a man,” Jesus asked, “if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” The current Republican Party seems to not understand that question. Donald Trump seems to have made gaining the world at the cost of his soul his entire life’s motto.

It’s amazing that there haven’t been more Republicans like Mitt Romney who have said: “Enough is enough! I can go no further!”

The reason, I guess, is that the rot that has brought us to the brink of Senator Roy Moore began long ago. Starting with Sarah Palin and the spread of Fox News, the G.O.P. traded an ethos of excellence for an ethos of hucksterism.

The Republican Party I grew up with admired excellence. It admired intellectual excellence (Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley), moral excellence (John Paul II, Natan Sharansky) and excellent leaders (James Baker, Jeane Kirkpatrick). Populism abandoned all that — and had to by its very nature. Excellence is hierarchical. Excellence requires work, time, experience and talent. Populism doesn’t believe in hierarchy. Populism doesn’t demand the effort required to understand the best that has been thought and said. Populism celebrates the quick slogan, the impulsive slash, the easy ignorant assertion. Populism is blind to mastery and embraces mediocrity.

Compare the tax cuts of the supply-side era with the tax cuts of today. There were three big cuts in the earlier era: the 1978 capital gains tax cut, the Kemp-Roth tax cut of 1981, and the 1986 tax reform. They were passed with bipartisan support, after a lengthy legislative process. All of them responded to the dominant problem of the moment, which was the stagflation and economic sclerosis. All rested on a body of serious intellectual work.

Liberals now associate supply-side economics with the Laffer Curve, but that was peripheral. Supply-side was based on Say’s Law, that supply creates its own demand. It was based on the idea that if you rearrange incentives for small entrepreneurs you are more likely to get start-ups and more innovation. Those cuts were embraced by Nobel Prize winners and represented an entire social vision, favoring the dispersed entrepreneurs over the concentrated corporate fat cats.

Today’s tax cuts have no bipartisan support. They have no intellectual grounding, no body of supporting evidence. They do not respond to the central crisis of our time. They have no vision of the common good, except that Republican donors should get more money and Democratic donors should have less.

The rot afflicting the G.O.P. is comprehensive — moral, intellectual, political and reputational. More and more former Republicans wake up every day and realize: “I’m homeless. I’m politically homeless.”