How Conservatism dies or how it lowered itself into the pit of Trump

[Joe Nation]

Republicans weren't always the cult of morons and miscreants we see them as today. They used to be principled adherents of fiscal responsibility and traditional values even if their motivations were simply a matter of self-preservation. At least they stood for something even if it wasn't exactly what they professed it to be.

Over the last few decades and longer, the GOP, beginning with the Southern Strategy, started a slow march down a dubious path that had neither principles nor traditional values as grounding forces to moor their descent. And descend they did.

I would argue that Trump didn't drag the GOP down to the bowls of the pit we see them in today. I would say that the GOP in the course of its long descent met Trump when they reached the bottom. Trump is no different today than he has ever been. He is the same repugnant amoral bastard that he was known to be his entire life. He has arguably not changed one iota.

It is the GOP, or the base that the GOP cultivated, nurtured, groomed, and unleashed on the rest of us that has finally lowered itself to Trump's level and as an unintended consequence, the base has also turned on the former GOP leaders. Why is this an important distinction? Because to defeat the army of an enemy across the chess board, you don't simply focus on the king, you have to decimate to foot-soldiers before you can capture the king.

Trump losing in November will leave his army intact, weakened but intact. They will still be able to sway local and state elections. What we need to do is halt their influence and not by placating to their demands but by demonstrating that their ideology is corrupt and unworthy of the higher ideals this country represents. We need to show them exactly what is wrong with the path they tried to take this country down. Only then will we finally be free of this nightmare we have been subjected to over the last few decades that culminated in 4 years of hell and division that nearly destroyed our country. On the other hand, if Trump manages to win in November, we will become a failed state.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. They've already tRumped themselves. They are very tRumped. . . . nt

[dalton99a]

2. Trump is the apex of their natural evolution

"The Birth of Trump"

[JHB]

3. One thing we have to do is not let them disown Trump

They're going to try to pretend Trump sprung out of nowhere and magically put a spell over the party, as he's repeatedly done to investors. They're going to try to tie him to the Democratic Party instead. They're going to claim they "never really supported him" and so on.

They're going to try to pretend everything was fine and normal back in good ol' 2014, before The Escalator.

Trump is the result of the ascendancy of Movement Conservatives within the Republican Party. They're the faction that rejected the mainline Republican acceptance of the basic framework of the New Deal (though with plenty of complaints about its details). Movement Conservatives considered that "socialism" and were determined to dismantle it, and every other change that came about in the 50s and 60s.

They are the faction that worked hard to undermine, isolate, or just plain wreck moderate Republicans who wouldn't get with their program. They set out to turn the Republicans into an explicitly conservative party, their brand of conservatism. Other factions, like the Rockefeller Republicans, got in the way of that, so they performed political hit jobs to break and eliminate them as a force within the party.


They are the faction that built an entire alternative messaging apparatus -- partisan think tanks, newsletters and magazines, partisan newspapers in influential places, partisan speakers to tour the "rubber chicken circuit" of civic groups and local party chapters, RW talk radio, eventually cable TV networks -- to paste smiley faces on conservative initiatives and politicians, and paste horns, tails, and cloven hooves on Democrats, liberals, the media. Disrupt, push through, and brazen out the kerfluffle that follows, leaving their policies still in place.

They are the faction that gladly invited RW evangelicals to find a home within the Republican Party. Why not? It gave them numbers at the polls, and both groups had their own alternative media, overarching visions of The Way Things Ought To Be, a notion of a golden age in the past that must be restored, a will to fundamentally restructure government according to their liking, to put their people on the courts to enforce that restructuring, and an innate vicious streak that drew them to demonizing their opponents. The last wheezing gasp of fiscal responsibility was rewarded with a torrent of bile, foam, and "traitor" accusations when Bush41 signed a feeble tax increase in the face of the ballooning Reagan-Bush deficits.

And extremism when fighting demons is no vice. They took down everyone within their party who had any interest in pulling the throttle back. Not when they see their big chance to grab all the marbles. So they grabbed with both hands, both under Dubya and then with Trump. He won the 2016 primary with more votes than any Republican in history because when it came to bile, foam, and demonizing, he was a consummate pro and the Republican base that Movement Conservatives had built loved him for it. And he's had lockstep support because 1) Movement Conservatives have successfully trained Republicans in Congress to vote with a uniformity that rivals the old Soviet Politburo, and 2) he's the proverbial "hand that can sign what we put in front of him".

Don't let them cut him loose. He's the result 60 years of "a choice, not an echo," of 40 years of the Reagan Revolution. He's theirs.

The Built That.

The don't get to disown him.

[Hamer555]

4. And lets be honest, disowning their candidates is what they do....

Romney /Ryan......they hate them now

Any bush - they hate them now.

etc. etc. etc.