Updated Compendium Of Pax Posts About Donald Trump
"Are Republicans Insane?" Best Pax Posts
The right’s shocking admission: Stunned by Trump’s dominance, some GOP pundits concede that Dems have been right about Republicans all along
Longtime Republicans are questioning the party's broader strategy as Trump has exposed its inner rot
“America’s in the middle of a real political storm — a real tsunami — and we should have seen this coming.” – Marco Rubio
It was always inevitable, I suppose. The Republican Party has debased itself for decades – courting racists, placating religious lunatics, and using the culture wars as a political wedge. Candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin are natural outgrowths of this conservative ecosystem; they’re exactly what you’d expect it to produce.
This is the climate Republicans have cultivated, and what we’re seeing now is the logical conclusion of those efforts.
The GOP establishment continues to eat itself from within, as officials scramble to make sense of it all. You might call it an identity crisis of sorts. Longtime Republicans are now questioning the party’s broader strategy. Here’s Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal:
“Liberals may have been fond of claiming that Republicans were all closet bigots and that tax cuts were a form of racial prejudice, but the accusation rang hollow because the evidence for it was so tendentious. Not anymore. The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism…It would be terrible to think that the left was right about the right all these years.”
Terrible indeed, but no less true. Here’s a similar Tweet by Max Boot, a neoconservative hawk and prominent Republican intellectual: “I’m a lifelong Republican but Trump surge proves that every bad Democrats have ever said about GOP is basically true.” Welcome to the club, Max. Happy to have you.
In addition to embracing the worst elements of its base, the GOP also blundered in its strategic decision to cede the business of governing to Democrats and focus instead on obstructing President Obama. “Our top political priority over the next two years,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell famously said in 2010, “should be to deny President Obama a second term.”
One of the less incoherent objections Trumpites raise against the Republican Party is that it hasn’t delivered on any of its promises. Legislatively, the GOP has been virtually useless. Election after election, session after session, Republicans have failed to pass any meaningful pieces of legislation, which is what happens when compromise becomes a heresy in your party.
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