The Lament of A Moral Republican, a Disappearing Species

With the passing of John McCain one of the last consistent Republican voices of opposition to the travesty that is the Trump/Pence regime has been silenced. The political party that once respected science and knowledge now embraces ignorance and rejects objective scientific fact.  Similarly, the political party that once was rightly or wrongly identified as having a base of "country club Republicans" now counts evangelical Christian extremists and white supremacists as its core base.  And meanwhile, the mantra that "character matters" has been flushed down the toilet as the party standard bearer is thrice married, serial adulterer and self-admitted sexual predator who lies more or less constantly and has emboldened the ugliest elements of the far right.  Peter Wehner, who served in three Republican presidential administrations (those of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush) has a lament in the New York Times that looks at the destruction of everyday morality within the GOP and expresses foreboding over where the criminality and moral bankruptcy of the Trump/Pence is headed and the damage being done to both what is left of the GOP and the nation.  Here are excerpts:

There’s never been any confusion about the character defects of Donald Trump. The question has always been just how far he would go and whether other individuals and institutions would stand up to him or become complicit in his corruption.

When I first took to these pages three summers ago to write about Mr. Trump, I warned my fellow Republicans to just say no both to him and his candidacy. One of my concerns was that if Mr. Trump were to succeed, he would redefine the Republican Party in his image. That’s already happened in areas like free trade, free markets and the size of government; in attitudes toward ethnic nationalism and white identity politics; in America’s commitment to its traditional allies, in how Republicans view Russia and in their willingness to call out leaders of evil governments like North Korea rather than lavish praise on them. But in no area has Mr. Trump more fundamentally changed the Republican Party than in its attitude toward ethics and political leadership.

For decades, Republicans, and especially conservative Republicans, insisted that character counted in public life. They were particularly vocal about this during the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, arguing against “compartmentalization” — by which they meant overlooking moral turpitude in the Oval Office because you agree with the president’s policy agenda or because the economy is strong.

Senator Lindsey Graham, then in the House, went so far as to argue that “impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”

All that has changed with Mr. Trump as president. For Republicans, honor and integrity are now passé. . . . It is a stunning turnabout. A party that once spoke with urgency and apparent conviction about the importance of ethical leadership — fidelity, honesty, honor, decency, good manners, setting a good example — has hitched its wagon to the most thoroughly and comprehensively corrupt individual who has ever been elected president. For many Republicans, this reality still hasn’t broken through. But facts that don’t penetrate the walls of an ideological silo are facts nonetheless. And the moral indictment against Mr. Trump is obvious and overwhelming. Corruption has been evident in Mr. Trump’s private and public life, in how he has treated his wives, in his business dealings and scams, in his pathological lying and cruelty, in his bullying and shamelessness, in his conspiracy-mongering and appeals to the darkest impulses of Americans. . . . It was delusional to think he would change for the better once he became president. Some of us who have been lifelong Republicans and previously served in Republican administrations held out a faint hope that our party would at some point say “Enough!”; that there would be some line Mr. Trump would cross, some boundary he would transgress, some norm he would shatter, some civic guardrail he would uproot, some action he would take, some scheme or scandal he would be involved in that would cause large numbers of Republicans to break with the president. No such luck. Mr. Trump’s corruptions have therefore become theirs. But the greatest damage is being done to our civic culture and our politics. Mr. Trump and the Republican Party are right now the chief emblem of corruption and cynicism in American political life, of an ethic of might makes right. Dehumanizing others is fashionable and truth is relative.

A warning to my Republican friends: The worst is yet to come. Thanks to the work of Robert Mueller — a distinguished public servant, not the leader of a “group of Angry Democrat Thugs” — we are going to discover deeper and deeper layers to Mr. Trump’s corruption. When we do, I expect Mr. Trump will unravel further as he feels more cornered, more desperate, more enraged; his behavior will become ever more erratic, disordered and crazed.

Most Republicans, having thrown their MAGA hats over the Trump wall, will stay with him until the end. Was a tax cut, deregulation and court appointments really worth all this?

Trump Continues to Enable Cruelty and Abuse

Twenty-five years ago (when I was still a Republican), Republicans and conservative Christians would harp that character in an elected official mattered and was a defining reason whether or not to support a candidate or officeholder.  Fast forward to today, and Trumpists - who have more or less replaced the Republican Party in all but name - evangelical Christians have made it most clear that to them, no matter how abhorrent Donald Trump's conduct or his immortality,  they will stand by Trump (in my view, because he panders to their racist bigotry). Seemingly, no amount of bigotry, misogyny, and calls for acts of cruelty causes these individuals to reach a point of saying "enough is enough" and support decency.  In contrast, Democrats, progressives, and individuals like me - an "out" gay, former Catholic and non-church attending member of the ELCA -  believe that character in public officials DOES indeed matter.  A column in the Washington Post makes the case for character and morality in our public officials, including the occupant of the White House.  Here are excerpts:

America suffers from a persistent misunderstanding of the role of character in public life. For some — a diminishing few — political leaders should be moral exemplars. They should be men and women whom children can look up to and emulate. 

Democrats surrendered this standard in their defense of President Bill Clinton. Republicans are abandoning this standard in their defense of President Trump. There is apparently no remaining constituency for the belief that high office should involve moral leadership.

Given human nature, this expectation was always a recipe for disillusionment. But while it is true that politicians are not called to be pastors, something has been lost in abandoning the ideal of rectitude. Trump did not just (allegedly) have a fling. He bragged about sexual assault and dismissed it as locker-room talk. He expanded the boundaries of acceptable misogyny.

It is one thing for public officials to fail a moral standard. That makes them human. It is something else to shift a standard in favor of cruelty and abuse. That makes them poor stewards of public trust. 

This points to an underestimated role for politics. Politicians may not be moral examples, but they help set the margins of permissible behavior and speech. I’m not talking about the law. We have a Constitution that protects hurtful, even hateful language. But public officials help determine the shape of social stigma, which is based on our self-conception as a community. 

[T]he stigmas we feel against misogyny and against racism are tremendous social achievements. Shifting those social expectations in favor of decency was the hard, sometimes dangerous work of generations. 

And political leaders — displaying good public character — have helped determine those expectations. It mattered when President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House. It helped break an oppressive social convention against the social mixing of blacks and whites. It mattered when Clinton began the tradition of celebrating Eid al-Fitr at the White House. It sent the signal that American public traditions reach beyond Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism. It also mattered when Trump in 2017 discontinued the White House Eid celebration.  

Trump’s political use of this idea [that "political correctness" has gone too far] has had little to do with academic freedom and disruptive student protests. It has had everything to do with testing the limits of prejudiced public language against migrants (particularly Mexicans) as potential rapists and Muslims (particularly refugees) as potential terrorists. 

This is a failure of public character with serious consequences. Trump is urging Americans to drink at a poisoned well of intolerance. This desensitizes some people to the moral seriousness of prejudice. It creates an atmosphere in which bigots gain confidence and traction. And one sad social consequence is the emboldened racism of Roseanne Barr and many like her, many of whom surely believe — on good evidence — that [Trump] the president of the United States is on their side. There are many drawbacks to being ignorant of and indifferent to history. But one of the worst is a failure to appreciate the depth of U.S. racism and the heroism of the long struggle against it. 

We are a country in which 1 out of 7 people was owned by another. We had an American version of apartheid within living memory. It was a hard-won lesson that racism is a form of oppression that destroys the soul of the oppressor as well. 

[I]t hurts to have [Trump] a president of poor character placing his thumb on the other side of the moral scale.

Trump has made it impossible for decent, moral people to support him and his agenda.  Those who continue to support him should be acknowledged by the decent, moral majority as being morally bankrupt and, in the case of evangelicals, utter hypocrites.