![]() ![]() The country then seemed to be falling apart-faced with riots, political assassinations, bombings overseas and at home. This confidence once attracted young voters (such as me, back in the late 1970s) to the party. Read: Mitch McConnell’s gift to progressives America is exceptional, and therefore America can do what its citizens believe they can do-especially if they treat government as an instrument rather than a master. After all, if human nature is eternal and rationality is unassailable, then emotional schemes and government overreach that deny these realities are bound to fail. These principles gave the Republican Party several decades of an almost preternatural self-confidence in the eventual triumph of their ideas. They believed that incrementalism is better than sudden change, that America is exceptional, that patriotism is honorable, and perhaps most important, that government is a necessity to be controlled, rather than a teacher to be revered. On policy, too, the conservatives moved along broad but common lines. Most of those ideas were predicated on some basic beliefs about human beings themselves, including the conviction that human nature is fixed rather than malleable, that intellect is a better guide to action than emotion, that tradition is valuable, and that religious faith is a cornerstone of a healthy society. ![]() But the GOP held clear lines of thought that stood as alternatives to liberalism. Strom Thurmond, Ronald Reagan, Howard Baker, and Edward Brooke were not necessarily deep thinkers, and they didn’t all agree on everything. You could fight those beliefs and policies you could argue with them, admire them, or hate them. The party of Lincoln has become, in every way, a political and moral nullity.Īmerican conservatism once meant something definite and tangible. This latest insult to the rule of law and the Constitution was possible only because the Republicans have already lost confidence in their own principles. However, this effort is more than the usual cynical mendacity and crass careerism (or, as one might say, “Elise Stefanik”) that characterize the current Republican Party. Their spines crushed by years of obedience to Donald Trump, the members of the GOP have once again retreated from civic responsibility, with one more humiliation of those last few in the party who thought that the Senate Republicans might mimic something like statesmanship. The Republicans in Congress are blocking a bipartisan investigation into the January 6 insurrection. ![]()
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