Old Or New Republican?
I was canvassing for elections last weekend, and a man told me he was a Republican. I asked him which one, the old or new Republican?
He got quite angry at the question, and called it sarcastic, along with a lot of other words that a paper wouldn’t print, before ordering me off his driveway (I was actually in the street).
My question may have seemed cheeky, but I think it is legitimate.
Political parties change over time. That’s a fact of history. I can’t think of anything more contrasting politically, than the change from the Dixiecrats of the Jim Crow south, to the Civil Rights Democrats of today.
The Republican Party was started as an abolitionist party, founded by former Whigs who were upset by the lack of effort to find an end to chattel slavery in America. Abraham Lincoln was only their second Presidential candidate. Within a decade the Whig party was no more, and the Republican party dominated much of the country for decades.
The most progressive President of the early 20th Century was Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who broke up monopolies, busted trusts, forced industry to negotiate with striking unions, and championed the rights of working people. A Square Deal is what he called it.
I grew up with a Republican party that professed fiscal discipline, strong national defense, and an unwavering opposition to authoritarianism – particularly regarding the former Soviet Union and then authoritarian Russia under the dictator Putin.
That Republican party reached out to all groups, and sought to build a “big tent” for the variety of different people in the country.
I didn’t always agree with that party, but as I considered myself a “blue dog” Democrat, I often saw overlap with Republicans on how to move the country forward.
Trump has changed the GOP. There’s no way to dodge this reality. The traditional Republicans of old didn’t change. It was the party that moved away from them. And it moved in a dark direction.
The old GOP members are not behind the current Republicans and their candidate for President.
By numbers that seem unbelievable, traditional Republicans are denouncing Donald Trump and endorsing the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for President.
Stalwart party members like the McCains and the Cheneys, along with many, many more, have endorsed Harris. Even most of the Republicans that served in the Cabinet of Trump during his last term are refusing to endorse him, or have made it clear he is a threat to America.
We see traditional conservative Republicans forming groups to oppose Trump and support Harris. There is the Lincoln Project, Republicans against Trump, Country First, The Bulwark, and many more, who are actively campaigning against Trump.
Even arch conservative columnist Bill Kristol has endorsed Kamala Harris.
These folks didn’t change their economics, and they didn’t change their support for a strong America that leads the free world.
They are motivated by allegiance to the Constitution, and to the democratic principles we were founded on. Our founders sought a “more perfect union,” and said so in our Constitution.
These traditional Republicans remain behind those ideals. And are concerned enough about the direction of their party to endorse and campaign for a Democratic candidate.
They see Kamala Harris’s experience as Vice President, as a Senator, as the Attorney General of the most populous state in America, and before that as District Attorney. They know Harris is tough on crime, and they know she is tough enough to stand up to the world’s dictators.
And they know that when Harris leaves office, be that after four years or eight, she won’t try to stop the peaceful transition of power like we know Donald Trump did. (I should mention that hundreds of members of Congress also failed this citizenship test, by joining his false claims of voter fraud and trying to help him steal the election).
And they can see that Trump is far too easily manipulated by Vladamir Putin. Again, this subject could support its own letter.
Economists – most of whom are fiscally conservative, are also endorsing Harris. The policies she will pursue are better by far for our economy than anything Trump has offered. And frankly he hasn’t offered much at that. Little more than sloganing and disparaging others. He spends most of his time attacking our fellow countrymen, and pretending that he is the most important man in the world.
When we see his behavior most recently, it is impossible to believe he is mentally stable at all.
His most significant accomplishment as President was a huge tax cut that mostly benefited the wealthiest people and large corporations, and he has promised to do more of that.
He mismanaged the worst pandemic we’ve seen in a century, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands more Americans than should have died.
Trump could have led the nation through that pandemic by leaning into best practices, instead of trying to force the economy to stay stable. It didn’t work, and wouldn’t work. Down in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro tried to force the economy to stay open, but so many people got sick or died, and business collapsed anyway.
His tariff plan is preposterous, and would lead to a massive recession and drive up the cost of living. (Economics 101, folks).
Simply put, tariffs are taxes on imported goods. They are paid by the importer, and the costs are passed on to the consumer – always.
Further, he recently offered the 1890s as an example of tariffs being widely used. Comparing today to America 130 years ago is foolish without the other side of the story.
Mark Twain called that period The Gilded-Age. The extraordinary wealth accumulated by the top percent of the public, had caused massive poverty and deprivation for huge underclasses of mostly immigrants.
Those immigrants were flooding our shores, and they needed jobs to support themselves.
The Robber Barons exploited those workers in sweatshops, factories, mines, and other places, and they discouraged foreign competition by lobbying for tariffs against competition.
And since the burden of tariffs lands on consumers, the wealthiest paid little or nothing to support the country they benefited so greatly from.
Two differences are glaring. The first is that we have a manufacturing surplus and a labor shortage. There aren’t the workers to fill more jobs if those factories were built in the first place.
We need more immigrants already. And Trump is mostly against immigrants, chiefly because the bulk of those wishing to emigrate to America are non-white. And white people are doing pretty well everywhere in the world, and often better where they are now. It’s the exploited peoples of the world that are seeking the opportunities available in America.
But that process has gradually changed the demographics in the land. The melting pot that is America, is producing different shades than it had in the past.
This white-nationalism appeals to a large minority.
So Trump can’t bring massive immigration to fill the newly built factories without upsetting his cult, leading to point two:
There won’t be a consumer base to purchase these products. There will be no need to hire anyone, because the increased cost of imports will mean fewer purchases. Without an increase in earnings, higher prices means less purchasing. People have to cut back on spending to afford the increased prices on imported goods. And where they cut back is on services in their own community. They eat out less. They reduce their entertainment budget. This hurts local workers. Workers who all now have to pay more for goods because of the tariffs.
This will cause inflation, as well as a recession.
Trump has no plan to help Americans get health care, nor afford the health care they have.
After repeatedly advancing bill after bill to terminate the Affordable Care Act as President, he finally admitted during his debate with Kamala Harris that he has no plan to replace it. After almost a decade of complaining about it, he has only the “concepts of a plan.” And yet he spent years trying to end it, and leave millions of Americans without health insurance.
He has no plan to bring down the costs of insurance, or medical care, or prescription drugs.
Donald Trump used the power of his office to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Perhaps because of a weak ego, he couldn’t accept that the American People rejected another Trump term and chose to move forward with new leadership.
He beckoned his followers to come to the Capital on January 6, 2021, where he fomented unrest and anger, making numerous lies about the election he lost. And then he directed that angry mob to the US Capitol. Next he sat in the White House and watched on TV as a huge violent mob attacked the Capitol, threatened to kill members of Congress, and even to hang Vice-President Mike Pence, while Trump did nothing. He took no action for three hours, while his own Capitol was under attack.
This has been corroborated thoroughly. Numerous members of his staff and Cabinet approached him about ordering the people to stop attacking the Capitol. They asked him to make public statements directing people to go home. Instead Trump inflamed the crowd with tweets.
There was no peaceful transfer of power in America for the first time. Trump did not provide a transition team for incoming President Biden. He did not attend the inauguration. And he never acknowledged that he lost.
In fact, after the failed coup on January 6, he continued lobbying Congress and other bodies to remain in power.
When he left the Whitehouse, he stole mountains of classified information, much of which was highly sensitive, top secret information that could expose American agents to death, could give tactical advantages to adversaries, and could harm the national security of the United States.
The long and arduous efforts to get those records back has yet to result in his prosecution, and we have no assurances that all such records have been returned.
Trump kept communicating with Vladimir Putin after Trump left office. It was reported that Trump spoke personally with Putin at least seven times after he left office. And much of this time was while he had possession of those classified documents.
Trump is so deeply submissive to Putin, that many suggest that he is being blackmailed. He cannot be trusted to operate in America’s best interest, but rather only in his own interest.
When so many traditional conservatives step away from their party and endorse the opposing candidate, any sensible person should take a pause to look at why.
And they should see that following Donald Trump into the madness he offers for our future is wrong. It would be a catastrophic mistake.
Trump is a chaos agent. He has spent the last year trashing the country, and making absurd claims about the state of our nation. He’s made racist claims about other Americans, and even more about those immigrants who are coming to share the dream that has brought so many millions before them.
He refers to other humans as vermin. He says they are “poisoning the blood of our country.” This is the language of fascists.
Trump has repeatedly said that as President he will use the military to arrest his political opponents. He has said he will federalize the police (that would make us a police state) to attack Americans who protest. Don’t think he’s bluffing. As President he did order the tear-gassing of peaceful protestors in Lafayette Square so he could pose for a picture holding a Bible (upside down).
One of those with him that day on Lafayette Square was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Mark Milley. Shortly after this incident, Milley made a public statement to the press stating that he didn’t know what Trump had planned, and that it was a mistake for him to attend such an event, and that he regretted having done so.
More recently, General Milley has told reporters that Trump is a “fascist to the core.” A sentiment shared by other senior members of Trump’s Cabinet. Former Secretary of Defense General James Mattis agreed with that characterization. As did Trump’s former Chief of Staff, General John Kelly.
40 out of 44 hand-picked Cabinet members of Trump will not endorse him. This includes his own Vice-President. These are (or were then) Republicans.
So, when someone asks you whether you are with the old or new Republican party, it is a fair question.
If someone is on the Trump train, there’s little I can say. Psychologically it looks like cult behavior. It looks like they’re responding emotionally out of fear. It looks like they have stopped thinking for themselves.
I don’t know how to break through that but I sure wish I could, because we need all Americans to work together to continue on our path toward a more perfect union.
But if you think of yourself as a traditional Republican, you should join the millions of others like you, and support Harris/Walz for President. And since every Republican down ballot – right down to State Representative, are election deniers, you should recognize that your party has left you and headed down a dark path.
I don’t know if the Republican party will survive this, or if they will go the way of the Whigs. It is possible that a decade from now the Republican party will no longer be a viable political party. Or, they may save themselves by ousting the election deniers and xenophobic reactionaries. In either case, America needs those citizens to step up now, and put an end to this authoritarian nightmare.
We seem to do best in America when there are two functioning parties committed to bipartisan efforts to move the country forward. But we should not support the party of a cult leader who is bent on vengeance and retribution.
Vote Democratic like your country depends on it.