Saturday, December 09, 2017

The GOP Is Riddled with Moral Rot


The moral bankruptcy that has overtaken the Republican Party did not happen over night.  In my view, it began when the wrongly name "Christian Right" - a group that is neither Christian in its behavior or right on moral issues - was welcomed into the party.  Then, when excesses and extremism began to take off under the influence of those who hate almost everyone and refuse to accept science and even objective reality, far to many conservatives and members of the pundit class became apologists for what was increasingly reprehensible (this includes David Brooks who in a column in the New York Times laments the consequences of his own accommodation with evil).  Add to this betrayal of decency Fox News and the rest of the right wing media and lunatics like Sarah Palin became mainstream in the GOP.  All of that we are witnessing in the GOP is the result of embracing toxic people and embracing hate and ignorance.  Brooks' column is on point.  Some of us saw this coming long ago, but our protests were ignored.  Here are column excerpts:
A lot of good, honorable Republicans used to believe there was a safe middle ground. You didn’t have to tie yourself hip to hip with Donald Trump, but you didn’t have to go all the way to the other extreme and commit political suicide like the dissident Jeff Flake, either. You could sort of float along in the middle, and keep your head down until this whole Trump thing passed.
Now it’s clear that middle ground doesn’t exist. That’s because Donald Trump never stops asking. First, he asked the party to swallow the idea of a narcissistic sexual harasser and a routine liar as its party leader. Then he asked the party to accept his comprehensive ignorance and his politics of racial division. Now he asks the party to give up its reputation for fiscal conservatism. At the same time he asks the party to become the party of Roy Moore, the party of bigotry, alleged sexual harassment and child assault.
There is no end to what Trump will ask of his party. He is defined by shamelessness, and so there is no bottom. And apparently there is no end to what regular Republicans are willing to give him. Trump may soon ask them to accept his firing of Robert Mueller, and yes, after some sighing, they will accept that, too.
That’s the way these corrupt bargains always work. You think you’re only giving your tormentor a little piece of yourself, but he keeps asking and asking, and before long he owns your entire soul.
The Republican Party is doing harm to every cause it purports to serve. If Republicans accept Roy Moore as a United States senator, they may, for a couple years, have one more vote for a justice or a tax cut, but they will have made their party loathsome for an entire generation. The pro-life cause will be forever associated with moral hypocrisy on an epic scale. The word “evangelical” is already being discredited for an entire generation. Young people and people of color look at the Trump-Moore G.O.P. and they are repulsed, maybe forever.
 “What shall it profit a man,” Jesus asked, “if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” The current Republican Party seems to not understand that question.
It’s amazing that there haven’t been more Republicans like Mitt Romney who have said: “Enough is enough! I can go no further!”
The reason, I guess, is that the rot that has brought us to the brink of Senator Roy Moore began long ago. Starting with Sarah Palin and the spread of Fox News, the G.O.P. traded an ethos of excellence for an ethos of hucksterism.
The Republican Party I grew up with admired excellence. It admired intellectual excellence (Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley), moral excellence (John Paul II, Natan Sharansky) and excellent leaders (James Baker, Jeane Kirkpatrick). Populism abandoned all that — and had to by its very nature. Excellence is hierarchical. Excellence requires work, time, experience and talent. Populism doesn’t believe in hierarchy. Populism doesn’t demand the effort required to understand the best that has been thought and said. Populism celebrates the quick slogan, the impulsive slash, the easy ignorant assertion. Populism is blind to mastery and embraces mediocrity.
Today’s tax cuts have no bipartisan support. They have no intellectual grounding, no body of supporting evidence. They do not respond to the central crisis of our time. They have no vision of the common good, except that Republican donors should get more money and Democratic donors should have less.
The rot afflicting the G.O.P. is comprehensive — moral, intellectual, political and reputational. More and more former Republicans wake up every day and realize: “I’m homeless. I’m politically homeless.”
 All of which is why I am now more or less a Democrat.  The GOP left me years ago.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

On the "less" side of your "more or less," John-Paul II was just another Catholic huckster who ignored all the evils of his church and encouraged the all the bigotry and superstition. If you want moral authority in the Catholic Church, John XXIII might have been a somewhat better choice. The best choice, though, is none of the above. I say this as a (happily) former Catholic.

Michael-in-Norfolk said...

It was Brooks, not I who cited John Paul II. In my view, John Paul II was morally bankrupt and was complicit in the sexual abuse of children and youths around the globe. That he was canonized shows that the Roman Catholic Church has zero moral standing. Only the evangelical Christians are more reprehensible.

Anonymous said...

I know you, too, are an ex-Catholic, and figured that that was what you meant about agreeing, more or less, with Brooks.