The elephant in the room is no longer the Republican Party.
Not anymore. The GOP is missing in action. When offered the choice of principle and decency or power, with few noteworthy exceptions, the Party leaders and the Republican Congress chose power.
With any other president of either party, you didn’t have to choose. But not with Trump; principle and decency have, from Day One, not been options. Now, perhaps, we have to add sanity.
This is no longer the Party of Reagan and Lincoln. This is a party full of Trump sycophants led intellectually (using that term loosely) by the likes of the White Supremacist twins Steve Bannon from afar and Stephen Miller whispering in his ear.
It’s a party that tolerates corruption and accepts pettiness and banality as the price to pay for having their guy in the White House, as erratic and impulsive as he may be. Apparently, the cost for selling the Party’s soul amounts to tax cuts for those who don’t need it, deregulation that damages the environment and screws the consumer and judges who will validate those decisions and whatever else may be coming.
For some Republicans, the cost is too great. Those in office are released when they decide they can no longer win back home and refuse to goose step to Trump’s tune. Decent people like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker and a few others will live to fight another day because they chose to not give up their principles for power. That will be remembered.
Then there are the unelected leaders who no longer support a party that used to be theirs – one of principle cloaked in decency. These people are legends – strategists, journalists, leaders with unquestioned Republican and conservative street cred. And they’re either timing themselves out or actually leaving the Party – Steve Schmidt, Joe Watkins, David Brooks, George Will, Nicole Wallace, Jennifer Rubin, Bret Stephens, Susan Del Percio, Bill Kristal, Charlie Sykes, Rick Tyler, Elise Jordon, Max Boot, David Frum. And more. All have deep roots and commitments to Republican and conservative values.
Some, like George Will, are so concerned about where Trump is taking this nation that he’s advising Republicans and conservatives to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections. Think about that. He’s asking Democrats to do what Republicans in Congress will not – to do their job, to provide oversight of a presidency run amok. George Will is not a traitor to the cause or his party. He’s a patriot. He’s putting the country first.
Joe Scarborough put it succinctly, “The Republican Party he (Trump) leads no longer deserves to survive.” For former Speaker John Boehner, it’s already a fait accompli. He said, “This is the president’s party but it is no longer the Republican Party.”
This nation needs a healthy two-party system where ideas and policies are debated among people who love this country above all else. When we can be assured that those people already possess the prerequisite character that encompasses empathy, decency, honor and trustworthiness, we also can be assured that proposed solutions to problems will be offered in good faith for the benefit of the country. But you can’t get there until those prerequisites are in place – and they never will be with Trump.
The elephant in the room is no longer the Republican Party. It’s Trump. He’s taking up all the space and crowding out the decent and thoughtful, breaking everything he comes in contact with, creating crisis after crisis. Loyalty to him, not the Constitution, is all that is his measure of worth. Most of all, his presidency is breaking faith with the American people. And, worst of all, he doesn’t care.
We’re so much better than this.
This will not last forever. At some point, we will need to come together in reconciliation if a viable two-party system will survive. In the meantime, it’s heartening to see those Republicans who care deeply for the standards professed by their party come out and come together to say, “Enough.”
If we are very, very lucky, perhaps Trump, as he glimpses his future – one that surely holds impeachment or the application of the 25th Amendment – also will decide to say “enough” – or in his case, “uncle.”
Marsha Shearer is a Villager and a frequent contributor to Villages-News.com.
