The Poisoning of the Conservative Mind

I have referenced my time on the Butler County GOP central committee as the penultimate straw in my growing disgust with the Republican party (Donald Trump was the final straw). When I was approached about running, it was by a good friend who suggested it as part of a group seeking to repair the party. This was in 2010, just as the Tea Party was beginning to take root. I saw that movement nationally, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, as one growing out of misplaced and misguided anger at the response needed to avoid financial calamity. Misplaced, because the real anger should have been directed at the lasseiz-faire policies that created the environment that made those bailouts necessary. Misguided, because it stirred up a lot of anger that should not have been stirred in the first place.

One of the people in the group that approached me, Ann Becker, is referenced in this piece. I was shocked when I found she was overtly campaigning for Trump in 2016. I was also shocked to find others in that group, including the person who approached me, supporting him as well. 

In her book, "Twilight of Democracy," conservative writer Anne Applebaum describes the rift in the GOP that began somewhere in the mid-2000s. I can trace my own disillusion back to that period. What you had were two wings that had been battling behind the scenes for decades - the nationalist wing, led by folks like Pat Buchanan, and, for lack of a better term, the limited government wing represented by Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and the like. One was backward looking, the other forward looking. Somewhere post-9/11, those wings began to diverge. The latter, which included people like George Will, William Kristol, Anne Applebaum, Mitt Romney and John McCain became outcasts - RINOs in conformity-enforcing terminology. The others, including folks like Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Joe Digenova and their cast of burn-it-all-down flamethrowers like Jim Jordan, Louis Gohmert and Josh Hawley delivered us the GOP of Donald Trump. It proudly proclaims to be the party of God, guns and Trump. That is not a governing philosophy by any stretch, but that is what they live by.

The article linked above shows how that mindset not only lives, but is thriving at the grassroots level. Too many are oblivious to it, but if not reversed, it will be our downfall. I believed that in 1992, when I wrote against Pat Buchanan's nationalist rantings. I believed it in 2004 when I wrote the GOP faced a coming rift between the chamber of commerce limited government sorts and the "do as I believe you should do" religious right. I believed it in 2008 when I wrote that the GOP had stopped being the party of limited government and self-reliance, choosing instead to celebrate limited thought and self aggrandizement. And I believed it in 2010 when I ran and won a seat on the county GOP central committee in an attempt to correct the party's course. But it was already running off the rails. I am convinced that it can no longer be righted. It must crash or we will all suffer.