It's a new party, and it isn't grand.
Heads up to Republicans who voted for Mitt Romney, John McCain, or either Bush. Your party left you. It's been replaced.
My earliest memory of what it meant to be a Republican was my hearing about Richard Nixon's "Checkers speech." While a Vice Presidential candidate in 1952, Nixon had been accused of getting campaign gifts he used for personal expenditures. I heard about the speech in 1960, at age 10, when Nixon was running against JFK. He said he took pains not to profit from his office in any way, such as by employing his wife in his Senate office. He could have done so; it was legal and customary, he said, but he thought it would be self-serving, so he didn't. The hook of the speech was that Nixon admitted that he kept one single gift, a small dog named Checkers because his young daughters loved it. The words that I best remembered from the speech were these:
"I should say this, that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she'd look good in anything."
Respectable cloth coat. Those were the words that stuck.
The sentence imbedded multiple themes of Republican virtues; Modesty; sacrifice; prudence; a husband's conspicuous affirmation of devotion to his wife. Republicans, as I understood it, were good, normal people with normal jobs living in normal families with two parents and a sensible number of well-loved children. Republicans might be smarmy about it and less than perfect, but they hid it because they knew they were supposed to be good and virtuous. They were respectable. They expected respectability of themselves and of other Republicans.
In that context, the impeachment and forced resignation of Nixon in 1974 made all the sense in the world to me. Nixon broke the rules of respectability. He cursed in the Oval Office! He covered up a crime by his campaign by committing one of his own when he obstructed justice by telling the FBI not to investigate a burglary, saying it was a CIA operation. He broke the rules. Good Republicans wouldn't stand for it. Nixon knew he did wrong and was ashamed.
That was then.
The Atlantic published excerpts from McKay Coppins' new biography of Mitt Romney. Romney told his biographer that the GOP has become a dangerous, undemocratic cult. Coppins wrote
In less than a decade, he’d gone from Republican standard-bearer and presidential nominee to party pariah.
Romney is an example of the respectable Republican of old. The policy decisions that supposedly define a political party -- tax rates, spending, foreign affairs, gun rights, immigration, abortion, public benefits, trade -- aren't what differentiate the new GOP. Romney says the new GOP is defined less by policy than its cynicism, nihilism, lawlessness, and shamelessness. Trump breaks the law and Republicans tolerate it. Key U.S. Senators who could tell the truth choose to endorse lies because it serves their careers rather than our country and oaths of offices. Romney identifies Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz in particular as shameless cynics. They know better, he said, but spread lies. U.S. Senators should be shaping opinion, but aren't. Romney says he quotes Mitch McConnell saying:
"You're lucky. You can say the things that we all think. You're in a position to say things about him that we all agree with but can't say."
Romney said that many GOP senators say the same thing as did McConnell, in private. Most of his colleagues realize full well that Trump has none of the virtues that make a good president and all of the ones that make him dangerous, Romney said. But their public silence affirms Trump's message.
Following the January 6 riot Romney spoke on the floor of the Senate.
What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the president of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth!
The name "Republican" still exists, but it is an entirely new political party. The brand has inertia but the substance is all new. GOP senators let Trump and conservative media feed Republican voter a diet of Trump, and have become what they have eaten. Party leaders don't lead those voters. They are afraid of them.
Spot on, line by line. Thank you, Peter.
In Douglas County (Oregon), the bat-guano insane wing has taken over.
https://www.nrtoday.com/opinion/letters/letter-america-first-is-replacing-the-gop/article_03b03b14-4ce3-11ee-9a0e-8fe2fa7e470e.html
https://douglascounty.gop/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/2023_August_NR-Submission.pdf
Very sad, indeed. The death of the GOP may be the death knell for democracy in this country.