The Party of Lincoln is Dying

[kpete]

A column in the Washington Post by conservative Michael Gerson makes the case that many in the GOP must now decide between morality and decency or remaining in the party and supporting Donald Trump and the hate and misogyny he embodies. You simply cannot have it both ways. Here are column highlights:

Is Trump himself a racist? Who the bloody hell cares? There is no difference in public influence between a politician who is a racist and one who appeals to racist sentiments with racist arguments. The harm to the country — measured in division and fear — is the same, whatever the inner workings of Trump’s heart.

For Republican leaders, this much was new: Since Trump now owns them, they now own his prejudice. Sure, Trump has gone nativist before, but this time it followed their overall stamp of approval, given in the cause of Republican unity. . . . . Having tied themselves to Trump’s anchor, the protests of GOP leaders are merely the last string of bubbles escaping from their lungs..

More:
http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-party-of-lincoln-is-dying.html

[Buzz cook]

1. The party of Lincoln died in the 1870s

With the explosive growth of corruption during and following the American Civil War.

What is dying now is the party of St. Ronnie in which one dog whistled racist tropes in order to gain power and shift federal money to your clients.

By making the racism overt Trump has exposed the core of that party.

[Hortensis]

2. "If a party could declare moral bankruptcy,

today’s Republican Party would be in Chapter 11." Thomas Friedman calling for dumping the GOP and the formation of a Grand New Party.

America needs a healthy two-party system. America needs a healthy center-right party to ensure that the Democrats remain a healthy center-left party. America needs a center-right party ready to offer market-based solutions to issues like climate change. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense gun laws. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense fiscal policy. America needs a center-right party to support both free trade and aid to workers impacted by it. America needs a center-right party that appreciates how much more complicated foreign policy is today, when you have to manage weak and collapsing nations, not just muscle strong ones.

But this Republican Party is none of those things. Today’s G.O.P. is to governing what Trump University is to education — an ethically challenged enterprise that enriches and perpetuates itself by shedding all pretense of standing for real principles, or a truly relevant value proposition, and instead plays on the ignorance and fears of the public.

It is just an empty shell, selling pieces of itself to the highest bidders, — policy by policy — a little to the Tea Party over here, a little to Big Oil over there, a little to the gun lobby, to antitax zealots, to climate-change deniers. And before you know it, the party stands for an incoherent mess of ideas unrelated to any theory of where the world is going or how America actually becomes great again in the 21st century.

It becomes instead a coalition of men and women who sell pieces of their brand to whoever can most energize their base in order for them to get re-elected in order for them to sell more pieces of their brand in order to get re-elected.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/opinion/dump-the-gop-for-a-grand-new-party.html?src=me&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Opinion&action=keypress®ion=FixedLeft&pgtype=article

[6chars]

3. Interesting to read about its founding ideology

Early Republican ideology was reflected in the 1856 slogan "free labor, free land, free men", which had been coined by Salmon P. Chase, a Senator from Ohio (and future Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Justice of the United States).[22] "Free labor" referred to the Republican opposition to slave labor and belief in independent artisans and businessmen. "Free land" referred to Republican opposition to plantation system whereby slaveowners could buy up all the good farm land, leaving the yeoman independent farmers the leftovers. The Party strived to contain the expansion of slavery, which would cause the collapse of the slave power and the expansion of freedom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)