If you take the long view, you can see that the country faces two threats that are more or less existential: climate change and China. The dangers from the former include more frequent and much worse natural disasters, loss of agricultural productivity, massive internal migration, and millions of desperate climate refugees at the border. The latter threatens us with, at best, the division of the globe into roughly equal spheres of influence, and at worst, with subordination to a nation with values far different than our own.
What links these two issues is the absence of any “rugged individual” solution. As with the pandemic, our response will require effective collective action. That is ominous for small government, negative freedom loving members of the GOP.
The Republicans will ultimately have to make some compromises to remain relevant. What should they be willing to sacrifice, and what is essential? That will be the subject of my next post.