Ben Sasse argues that unconditional fealty to Trump is not conservatism. He’s right, of course; the pathetic thing is that it took a lot of courage for him to say it. How in the world did we get to this state of affairs?
I’ve discussed the devolution of the GOP at great length in previous posts. I have a new series on the topic, focusing on the impacts of several key personalities, planned for next month. For present purposes, there are two important things to remember:
- The GOP hasn’t been a genuinely conservative party since it embraced Newt Gingrich and his bomb throwing and decided tax cuts for the wealthy were the solution to all economic problems, regardless of the underlying circumstances. In other words, conservatism hasn’t been part of the GOP equation for over 25 years. The last real GOP conservative of any consequence was George H. W. Bush.
- Trump’s great “accomplishment” has been to convince the vast majority of GOP voters that he was the only thing standing between them and the destruction of their idea of America. He did this with his tweets and rallies and in cooperation with the house organ of the Reactionary faction of the party: Fox News. That’s how the “weird worship” came about– the reason Mitt Romney, the standard bearer of the GOP in the 2012 presidential election, is a pariah within the party less than a decade later.
Think about that last sentence for a minute. It shows you exactly how far down the GOP has gone, and how fast.