I have been predicting the demise of the Republican Party for a number of years now even as recently as the 2012 presidential election.1 I have been a little premature in the pace of their predicted implosion but, for me, it has been apparent for quite a while. It is amazing to me that Republicans do not seem to have a clue about themselves. Back when Mitt lost to Obama they huddled together and came out with their reflections on what they did wrong and how to fix it. It all came down to public relations. They needed to put the right spin on things to win national elections without changing any of their basic doctrines or self-righteous instincts. They just knew that the “American People” were on their side and the Democrats were marginal with their obsession about ethnic groups, women’s issues, climate change and massive wars.
Now, we see the Republican Party coming apart at the seams, in total disarray, and they do not have a clue about why it is happening. Their answer for their dilemma has always been their nemesis; the enemy liberals and Democrats, were what mucked up the works for them. If only these Democratic idiots would get out of the way, they would show us how their ideology was the answer to all our woes. If we let the ‘free market’ go unhindered and come down hard on the world stage with military might while letting the original intent of the constitution shape social values, family and culture as what ‘we’ all really know is what God wants, would be the final solution. Even in the Deep South where Republicans have dominated for decades, they still blame the Civil War and Democrats for higher poverty, worse health care and lower educational standards of the deep red states.
Here is the real reason why their party is doomed: they cannot see how what they have done has made a Donald Trump possible. All the years they were spinning conspiracy theories on Fox News, spitting out hatred, whining about the ‘Federal Government’, inciting the right to get further and further right created a base that could only react with negativity, anger, frustration and ultimately, drama. The old right’s insistence on not making excuses, putting your nose to the grindstone and above all stop complaining and whining went out the window. The new right was given the blessing and even a new virtue for complaining, stewing in anger and frustration about their dilemma and lot in life. It was all the fault of the ‘Federal Government’, the Democrats, the godless, the communists, the terrorists, the blacks, the Hispanics, they women’s libbers, the lying climate change advocates, the activist judges, on and on… All the while they were creating a monster. Monsters do not recognize ideologies. In their pure form they simply want utter destruction.
Trump is the embodiment of the monster they have fashioned for themselves. Trump, the archetypal Republican hero of capitalism, who must be smart and above ethical reproach, incorruptible and the embodiment of the truly free god who can speak politically un-correct truths due to his massive wealth and beauty would be the savior of the down-trodden. It mattered nothing to his supporters that their woes may have been the result of capitalists like Trump and not politicians and the ‘Federal Government’. As Karl Marx observed about the heroic ideal of the capitalist long ago, wealth leveled out all differences. Those with money were very, very smart as Trump fashions himself. He must be beautiful, just look at his wife and children. He must be a military genius. He must understand how to make everyone rich like him and get rid of all the riff-raff in Washington. All the while what ran out of control under the veneer of such fantasies was the sanctification of unencumbered ego. While the base could indulge in unabashed negativity, anger, frustration and endless whining, the heroic conqueror of ‘free market’ capitalism was bestowed with all knowledge and virtue. He transcended ideology. Even the most radical right wing dogma, except perhaps pure fascism, met its irrelevance in the drama of the One beyond corruption and political correctness.
The so-called ‘establishment’ of the Republican Party has not yet understood how they created this monster that will eat their party alive. The rot in their roots was all their own doing. Their base ate way too much of the party’s own bitter concoction. They gorged themselves on raw emotion and reactionary drama at the behest of the snake charming elites of the Republican establishment. Then, the un-dead they created tore the establishment apart limb by limb. In effect, the party sanctioned the evil they claimed to disdain. They became self-indulgent narcissists with the continual goading of the establishment they now hate. Hate has no bounds. It stops at nothing. Bitterness eats the soul alive and reaps havoc on everything it touches. The old right would have nothing to do with this kind of indulgent Republicanism.
The bottom line is that the reason the Republican Party is doomed is because they cannot see their own complicity in in the success of Donald Trump. They are dumbfounded by virtue of their own adamant denial. The old right would tell them to stop the whining, take responsibility for their demise and turn it around by their bootstraps not by more creative public relations, more bitter and negative attacks but positive, can-do, problem solving, inclusive not exclusive, minding our own business not solving the world’s problems with wars, moderation and making the government better not the brunt of all complaining. Until the party acknowledges their complicity in the popularity of Trump to their base they will continue on the path to their own destruction. Blaming Trump as a fake and really a liberal is simply drinking more of their own poison. Don’t get me wrong I love the freak show and have no problem watching the new right get what’s coming to them. However, I do think there is a legitimacy in some aspects of conservativism which we are all the lesser for; in not allowing them to work for society and instead, ignorantly against our better angels.
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