Trump is destroying the Republican party. It's up
to conservatives to stop him.
We used to have a party of ideas and principles, not
one dedicated to a cult of personality. We can get back there again — if we
make some hard choices.
July 7,
2020, 9:34 PM CEST
By Ashley
Pratte, communications strategist, and board member, Republican Women for
Progress
The
conservative movement used to be rooted in ideas; these days, it’s all about
indoctrination into the party of Trump. Republicans need to wake up and realize
that their party — the party of Lincoln, the party of free markets and the
party of limited government — has been hijacked by a group of people who
believe in none of those principles, and Republicans need to condemn what the
party has become and leave the interlopers behind.
There are
signs that this may finally be starting to happen.
The party
has strayed far from its roots because of Trump, most pointedly with his abuses
of government power; his recent authorization of military force to quell
protests while condoning the use of violence against the American people should
be shocking to any Republican who claims to stand for limits on government
authority. But since he’s assumed the presidency, Trump has also: stirred up
racial tensions in America; condoned and practiced sexist behavior; tried
repeatedly to build a costly, enormous and failure-prone wall at our border;
separated immigrant children from their families; abandoned and mistreated
foreign allies; relied on nepotism within his administration; botched a
response to a global pandemic; attempted to restrict and regulate private media
companies that challenge him; supported discriminatory policies to prevent LGBT
couples from adopting; and led a war on the free press.
His
presidency hasn’t been a fight for conservative policies at all, unless one
cares only about judicial nominees and a lone tax cut; it’s been about the repeated
tyrannical use of government power. Nonetheless, many conservatives have put
their former platform principles aside for Trump’s celebrity.
Trump
cannot and will never be the standard-bearer of a Republican Party that has
somethingmore to offer Americans than a cult of personality; others within the
organization need to recognize the dangers to a robust party of allowing him to
hold that role for much longer.
I don’t say
this lightly, because I used to be a Republican: I voted and worked for Sen.
John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008, voted and worked for Mitt Romney's
presidential campaign in 2012 and even wrote in then-Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin
on my ballot for president in 2016 — in part because I became a public
#NeverTrumper in June 2016. But I officially left the Republican Party in
November 2016 by changing my political affiliation to independent; I felt I had
to put my principles over politics, even if my party wouldn't.
Since then,
Donald Trump has fueled a consistent narrative that you’re either for him and
thus America or, if you're against him, you're against America, thereby
painting those who criticize him and his policies as fundamentally unpatriotic.
He uses rhetoric like this (and much, much worse) to divide our country rather
than to unite it, and his shrinking base of fanatical supporters parrot what he
says, falsely believing they are advancing conservative, Republican values.
Little could be further from the truth: Repeating Trump’s falsehoods and
ramblings doesn't help the Republican Party. It simply feeds Trump’s personal
propaganda machine, and is meant to build up his brand at the expense of the
party's.
And as the
party allowed itself to be rebranded in Trump's image, it lost its moral
compass and focused on fueling his base to turn them out for elections. The
party and its leaders are now even allowing the president to traffic in racist
rhetoric without condemning it; instead, they're making excuses for it or
ignoring it, including when Trump retweeted (and later deleted) a video of an
apparent supporter yelling “white power.” This type of speech is having
damaging and dangerous effects, both for the country and for the party that is
condoning it.
Polling
from the Pew Research Center in mid-June shows that only 19 percent of
Republicans or Republican-leaning voters are satisfied with the way things are
going in our country, a sharp decline from 55 percent in April — and after it
had been above 50 percent for nearly all of Trump’s presidency. Trump's
approval rating among self-identified Republicans in Gallup's June poll,
however, rose to 91 percent, even as it dropped to an all-time low of 2 percent
among Democrats and 33 percent among independents — possibly a reflection of
voters turning away from Republicans in general. (It remains at 38 overall,
slightly above his personal worst of 35 percent.)
The party's
and Trump’s rapidly decreasing popularity comes in the wake of his handling of
the pandemic and the lack of leadership during the George Floyd protests, and
both are starting to have an effect on down-ticket Republican races. That
should give these ardent Trump supporting candidates pause: Continuing to
unconditionally support him will lead to their political demise.
It is high
time for Republicans to stand up to those currently leading the party by
leaving it and starting anew. Rebuilding would take time, but it’s imperative
to rid the conservative movement of the rot of Trump and return to the days of
a big tent party where all were welcome and embraced on the basis of our
commitment to a shared set of ideas about how to run our democracy, not how
best to worship one leader.
While
Romney may be the lone Republican senator to defy Trump at all (since the
retirement of Jeff Flake of Arizona and the death of McCain), many
organizations like the Lincoln Project, Republican Voters Against Trump, 43
Alumni for Biden and Right Side PAC are forming. All have Republicans at the
helm who are publicly supporting Biden in a grassroots effort to take down
Trump at the ballot box in November. The focus of many of these groups are
swing states such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, which are full
of suburban voters who voted for Trump in 2016.
While these
groups are encouraging, Republican lawmakers still need to understand that they
are going to hemorrhage support until they disavow the Trump takeover of their
party. If they want people to remain “Republican” voters such as the ones who
belong to these newly formed groups, they need to start rebuilding the party
and reground it in the principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility
and equality for all.
There can
be no room for hatred or bigotry of any kind in our country, and our country’s
leaders — and specifically our president — must be willing to stand up against
it, not stoke it for perceived political advantage. But each new low to which
this administration sinks proves that another four years will make America and
its citizens weaker, not greater. This election is truly a battle to reclaim
the soul of America — and it’s going to take former Republicans and even
current Republican voters to do it.
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