What? Another Anti Trump Book And A Darn Good One
I just finished reading Stuart Stevens’ mighty insightful little book, “It Was All A Lie: How the Republican Party became Donald Trump.” Another title might have been, The GOP’s Longtime Delusion into darkness. You may assume that all quotes are those of Mr. Steven (except when that is obviously not the case) as they pertain to the above-mentioned book.
The book’s main theme is how Mr. Stevens and other Republicans have since the mid 1960s deluded themselves into believing that they, as “principled” conservatives, were, and are not now, part and parcel of a racist party. And how those still active in the GOP have, since the arrival of Donald J. Trump to the White House, fully embraced Trump’s cultist party as a means of holding on to power at the expense of their personal decency and the nation’s best interest.
Stevens hits the nail smack-dab on the head when he says that even many of the most antitramp former Republicans still don’t get it. The party of the sainted Abraham Lincoln has been turning racist since the mid 1960s. “In 1964 Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act, and his black support plumed to 7 percent,”this from the man who started the modern conservative movement.
In fact all the party’s old sacred cows, William F. Buckley Jr., Ronald Regan, and the father and son presidential Bush duo, not to mention the disgraced Richard Nixon, all at one time or other have stooped to employ racist memes and strategies in order to collect bigoted White votes — Willie Horton, Welfare queen, silent majority, Southern Strategy.
Writing of Bill Buckley: “Like his defense of segregation in the National Review, the McCarthy book [Buckley’s defense of the disgraced 1950s Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin] is a reminder for those who today, in the age of Trump, like to cast William Buckley as the lost soul of true conservatism: that for all his well-crafted sentences and love of language, Buckley was often a more articulate version of the same deep ugliness and bigotry that is the hallmark of Trumpism.”
McCarthy, the demagogue, pretended to be a fanatical anti communist, and many Republicans played along with his political sideshow. Now Republicans are playing an opposite sort of game.
Talking about Republicans who sit on their hands when Trump kisses up to Putin (an avowed enemy of the United States) and demeans our own intelligence services. “Why? These are not stupid men and women, though more than a few do a fair imitation. They all will have their own justifications that amount to a personal Faustian bargain predicated on the self-delusion that some particular issue or cause is more important than their oath of office,” their oath being to protect and defend the United States.
Here the issue is allowing the Russians to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election. “The simple reality is that the Republican Party was in business with Russian intelligence efforts, what used to be known as the KGB, and precious few leading the Republican Party seem to give a damn.”
Commenting on the Republican bottom line under Trump. “The most distinguishing characteristic of the current national Republican Party is cowardice. The base price of admission is a willingness to accept that an unstable, pathological liar leads and pretend otherwise. “
Good guys like Steve Schmidt, Joe Scarborough and David Jolly may have been wedded to what they thought were rock rib conservative values, but the party that was being built by operatives paid to win by any means — dog whistling and voter suppression for sure — didn’t take conservative values seriously. They accepted them as purely window dressing. For the GOP that was under construction these folks saw themselves as belonging to the White peoples party as championed on Fox News and conservative talk radio.
Former RNC chairman Michael Steele is another good guy who regularly camps out at the liberal cable news network MSNBC, and, yet, he still sees himself as a conservative Republican, as if such a thing ever really existed outside his own mind and that of a few hundred other deluded folks that babbled on incessantly about family values, small government, lower taxes (yes, for corporations and the rich) fiscal responsibility and a some mythical broad tented party. Look around Michael; do you see minorities piling into the White man’s party?
Thus when Trump came along after having laid his political foundation by the fact that he was the leading Obama Birther, it became for the Republican base love at first sight as Trump attacked minority right out of the gate, when coming down the escalator of Trump tower. He knew instinctively from which party he could best mine bigotry. This forced the truly good guys of the GOP, with few exceptions, to abandon active participation in party affairs (many of those of fine character having already left the party years or months before), or else in many cases of low character persons they did a complete public about-face, turning from Trump hater to Trump lover, as so vividly exhibited by that king of hypocrisy, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and that goon from Texas, Senator Ted Cruz.
Trumpism is about selfishness and greed. The GOP base echoes their leader. They see freedom as the right to do whatever the hell they want and the heck with anyone else. I mean, why would we ever want to ware a facemark? They have zero appreciation for democratic ideals that are centered around the common good for all peoples. They would disparage president Kennedy when he said: “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Their Racism is about maintaining venal tribal advantage. America they believe should be about me and my tribe, the heck with those other bozos. Their hearts are corrupt and so they lean toward Trump’s despoiled authoritarian ways.
I highly recommend Mr. Stuart’s book that rips open the hypocrisy and self-dilution of past and present Republicans.
