The Felon and MAGA Have Destroyed Conservativism

I often note that I grew up in a Republican voting family and was actively involved in the Republican Party for over a decade.   That Republican Party of yesteryear that I belonged to is dead and gone, destroyed by the rise of the Felon and his MAGA movement which have not only welcomed into the GOP "big tent" some of the ugliest elements of the far right that back in my era in the GOP were kept to the fringes and and viewed with mistrust - if not horror - by many traditional Republicans.   Traditional Republicans who are not living in a fantasy world where they pretend nothing has changed have fled the GOP like the author of a piece in The Atlantic, myself and many others I know.  Open racism and misogyny are now welcomed in the GOP of today and by embracing the Felon, it's clear that morality and some semblance of decency are no longer a requirement for admission to the party leadership. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are now fully welcomed as are the most extreme right wing "Christians." As long as one hates racial minorities, gays, and wants a quasi-theocracy, the welcome mat is there for joining the GOP.   As the piece in The Atlantic lays out, the destruction of traditional American conservatism has been nearly complete.  Here are article highlights:

The “Make America Great Again” movement is the beating heart of the GOP, the dominant political party in America—which makes MAGA the most important political movement in the world. And that is why some recent developments within the MAGA movement are so disquieting.

Earlier this month, the College Republicans of America, one of the oldest youth organizations affiliated with the Republican Party, hired Kai Schwemmer as the group’s political director. Schwemmer has past ties to the white supremacist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes and his Groyper movement, a loose network of white-nationalist activists and internet trolls who gravitate around online influencers, primarily Fuentes.

College Republicans of America President Martin Bertao defended the hire on X, writing that he had reflected on the decision and chose “to apologize … to absolutely NOBODY,” adding, “CRA will never back down to the WOKE mob!” . . . . Schwemmer is hardly an isolated case. Last year, Politico reported on leaked Telegram chats spanning seven months from leaders of Young Republican chapters in several states—chairs, vice chairs, and committee members exchanging racist and anti-Semitic messages.

While some figures in the GOP criticized the comments, Vice President Vance came to the defense of the Young Republicans, saying that the “reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys.” Vance added, “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that’s what kids do.” Several of the worst offenders were in their 30s.

A few months later the Miami Herald revealed that leaked chats from a Republican group at Florida International University showed participants using racial slurs, repeatedly expressing a desire to violently attack Black people, and describing women as “whores.” The text messages contained jokes about gas chambers, slavery, and rape. There was also plenty of praise for Adolf Hitler. Such praise appeared so regularly that at one point, the group was renamed “Nazi Heaven.”

These incidents are evidence of the normalization of white-supremacist and neo-Nazi rhetoric among younger Republican activists.

Among the older generations, a ferocious, intra-MAGA civil war is being waged between high-profile media and political personalities, including people such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Matt Walsh on one side and Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin on the other. There’s also Laura Loomer versus Elon Musk, and Musk versus Steve Bannon, and Bannon versus Dinesh D’Souza, and D’Souza versus Carlson. On and on it goes, with no end in sight.

The most recent bitter recriminations center on the Iran war and Israel. Consider an exchange between the current and former Fox News hosts Mark Levin and Megyn Kelly.

Levin, a popular radio-talk-show host who strongly supports both the Iran war and Israel, took to social media last Sunday to describe Kelly, a critic of both the war and of Israel, as an “emotionally unhinged, lewd, and petulant wreck” who is “utterly toxic.” Kelly, who hosts one of the most-listened-to podcasts in America, responded by calling him “Micropenis Mark Levin,”

Levin soon fired back. “Busy Sunday morning for Megyn Kelly,” he wrote. “She wakes up and has ‘micropenis’ on her mind. Suffice to say, if it talks like a harlot, and posts like a harlot, it’s … well, you know the rest. Shalom!”

Then Donald Trump weighed in, posting a defense of Levin on Truth Social, calling him “a truly Great American Patriot” who is “far smarter than those who criticize him.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, however, sided with Kelly. . . .The MAGA movement, like other radical political movements before it, is eating its own.

In January 2016 I was a lifelong Republican, having served in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations. Yet that month I wrote in The New York Times that Republicans should not vote for Trump under any circumstances, even if his opponent was Hillary Clinton. I described him as a “virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness.” But I went beyond that.

Trump’s nomination, I said, would threaten the future of the Republican Party, because although Clinton might defeat it at the polls, only Trump could redefine it. I added this: Mr. Trump’s presence in the 2016 race has already had pernicious effects, but they’re nothing compared with what would happen if he were the Republican standard-bearer. . . . Mr. Trump would represent a dramatic break with and a fundamental assault on the party’s best traditions.

What we have seen in the decade since is the realization of those worst fears. To be clear, the MAGA movement’s rancidity isn’t due to only Trump. The impulses now on display within MAGA existed long before he entered politics. But those impulses were, for the most part, confined to the fringes. Republican presidents and other political leaders did what they could to keep it that way.

But from the moment Trump announced his candidacy in the summer of 2015, he sought to cultivate and encourage the ugliest passions within the GOP, dousing the embers of hate with kerosene. Among Trump’s most consequential legacies has been his deformation of the temperament and disposition of virtually the entire Republican Party.

I don’t mean to suggest the Republican Party pre-Trump was anything close to perfect. Like any political party, it had weaknesses, and its record was mixed. It was hardly the ideal embodiment of conservatism; no political party could be. But under Trump, the GOP has become a profoundly different, and a far more malicious, party. Within the Republican Party, from top to bottom, Trump has made cruelty and transgressiveness cool. And in the process, he killed American conservatism.

Trump has overturned many long-standing public-policy commitments of conservatives—supporting free trade, reforming entitlements, supporting foreign assistance to save lives and advance American interests, standing by NATO, and standing against Russian oppression at home and aggression abroad. But the deeper and more lasting damage he has done is to conservatism as a sensibility.

One of the most important figures in the history of conservatism is the 18th-century Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, his most famous work, Burke warned about the dangers of a revolutionary zeal aimed at completely redesigning a civilization. Burke rightly feared it would unleash destructive passions and horrifying violence. . . . Burke’s key insight was that stripping civilizations of their beauty and sense of reverence would lead to spiritual impoverishment and, eventually, to terror. And like his contemporary Adam Smith, Burke believed that the cultivation of human sympathy, including the capacity to feel the pain of others, was essential to a good society.

British conservatism is somewhat different than American conservatism; the latter has traditionally been somewhat more forward-leaning, a bit more rights-based and ideological, and focused more on the individual as opposed to the community. . . . both recognize the importance of the education of character, the cultivation of decency, and the taming of the dark passions.

MAGA is not just antithetical to conservatism; it is at war with it. . . . At the core of the MAGA project and Trumpism is disruption and destruction, the delegitimization and razing of institutions, and the brutalization of opponents. Its leader, the president, abuses power, hurts the innocent, and mocks the dead before their families have even begun to grieve.

The MAGA ethic celebrates dehumanization. It is lawless, crude, and combative. Its entire ecosystem—social media, podcasts, and talk radio—is committed to spreading lies and conspiracy theories, to stoking rage and resentment. The disciples of the MAGA movement define themselves by what they hate much more than by what they love. They pursue culture wars with revolutionary zeal even as they vandalize our civic culture.

Trump and the key figures within the MAGA movement rejected conservatism not because they failed to understand conservatism well enough but because they understood it all too well. If conservatism is to ever again find a home in the GOP, it will be because the party decides that what is true and good and beautiful is indeed worth conserving. Right now the Republican Party is light-years away from that, and those who cherish conservatism should say so.