The GOP is becoming the party of exclusion. Who wants to be a part of that? By Kathleen Parker [View all]
PHILADELPHIA
A longtime Republican friend texted just as the Democratic National Convention was burying itself in balloons: Im sorry, she said, Im a Democrat. Another Republican friend called after President Obama spoke Wednesday night: Im sorry, he said, Im a Democrat.
No apologies necessary. But thanks surely go to Donald Trump and his spineless Republican enablers. The party of Lincoln, a sometimes laughable bragging point for diehards whose racial attitudes survived the Civil War intact, is long gone. Its dissolution began at least with Richard Nixon, who embraced a Southern strategy that pandered to racists and set the course for todays GOP.
The party of angry men and patient women tried to add a little sugar and spice, plunging itself ever lower on the curve when it embraced a cute little winkin, blinkin and noddin gal-gov from Alaska as vice-presidential running mate to John McCain and a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Next came the tea party movement, to which Sarah Palin briefly attached her Winnebago, followed by the government shutdown, and culminating with the glittering, twittering Tower of Trump.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/conservative-but-not-republican/2016/07/29/a8941a8c-55cf-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html