Some of my former Republicans colleagues still do not grasp why I left the Republican Party. A number who choose to ignore the ugliness that the continue to enable tightly close their eyes and make the accusation that I have become a "single issue" voter - as if me coming out explains it all away. The accusation is disingenuous in a number of ways, not least because being gay makes one conscious of many issues, issues on which today's Republican Party has chosen to champion the wrong policies. The accusation also allows the accusers to ignore other reasons for leaving the GOP. One was the rank lies and dishonest that were increasingly becoming the norm in the Party. Another was the willingness to subvert the constitutional rights of others on issues of religious freedom, voting rights, and equal protection under the law. In sum, I would have felt dirty and immoral had I remained in the Republican Party. A column in the Washington Post looks at who the GOP has sought to mainstream lies and extremism. The truth, honesty and decency are no longer valued by today's Republican Party. Here are column excerpts:
The [John Birch] society, which still exists, enjoyed its heyday in the early 1960s and saw communists everywhere. Robert Welch, its founder, even cast President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.” The group was so far-out that the founder of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr., published a 5,000-word excoriation in National Review that excommunicated the Birchers from the responsible right.
Why have our politics gone haywire, why have our political arguments turned so bitter, and why was Donald Trump able to win the Republican nomination and, eventually, the presidency?
A central reason has been the mainstreaming of a style of extremist conservative politics that for decades was regarded as unacceptable by most in the GOP.
The extremist approach is built on a belief in dreadful conspiracies and hidden motives. It indulges the wildest charges aimed at associating political foes with evil and subversive forces. What’s striking about our current moment is that such groundless and reckless accusations have become a routine part of politics — all the way to the top.
On Thursday night, President Trump sent out a typically outlandish tweet peddling deceit by way of promoting Republican Ed Gillespie against Democrat Ralph Northam in next month’s election for governor of Virginia.
If that tweet sounds like desperation, that’s because it is. Northam, Virginia’s lieutenant governor, has been leading Gillespie by four to six points in most polls. The Democrat was ahead by a whopping 13 points in a Washington Post-Schar School poll released the morning of Trump’s tweet.
On one theory, Trump is trying to rally his enthusiasts to Gillespie to help him cut his polling gap. But the Trump ploy could also backfire: Roughly 6 in 10 Virginia voters disapprove of Trump’s presidential performance, and nearly twice as many likely voters (30 percent) say opposition to Trump rather than support for him (17 percent) motivates their choice in the governor’s contest. Trump’s intervention could just as easily energize the larger group of Virginians who dislike him.
Tossing out the outrageous absurdity that the moderate, mild-mannered Northam is “fighting for” a gang whose motto is “Kill, Rape, Control” should be disqualifying for any politician who makes it. The claim originated in Trump-like Gillespie advertising rooted in Olympian leaps of illogic and distortion.
[Y]ou might say, campaigns are often dirty. But current forms of right-wing dirty politics reflect a reversion to the old extremism. It has become part and parcel of “normal” politics and justifies kooky pronouncements as expressions of patriotism. Ordinary political acts are painted as diabolical. Dark plots are invented out of whole cloth. They are first circulated on websites that traffic in angry wackiness, and are eventually echoed by elected officials.
The old extreme right linked all manner of actions by its opponents to communism. The new ultra-right regularly ties its foes (as the Trump-Gillespie calumny does) to crimes ascribed to immigrants, or to radical Islam.
An authentic conservative knows that extremism is the antithesis of a philosophy devoted to the preservation of free institutions. The extremists hated Eisenhower because he understood this.
Although our current commander in chief is also a golfer, he otherwise has little in common with our 34th president. Trump is urging the right down a path that leads to nothing but trouble — for conservatism, but also for our country.
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