It’s Time for Moderate Republicans to Join us in Righting the Ship

On January 18, I posted a blog, Can the Democrats Get Clever,  arguing that the time had come for Democrats to make a deal with moderate Republicans, a deal that might save the Republic from a madman in the Presidency and a Republican party now controlled by a group of right-wing neo-fascists.  As I wrote then:

“This year provides a most unusual opportunity for deal making.  Just consider how Donald Trump belittled his opponents in the Republican primaries.  Little Marco, lying Cruz.  Senator McCain is ‘no hero’.  Forming Trump’s cabinet, Trump has given all of the positions to the extreme right – nominees intent on dismantling their respective agencies.  The coming administration is, in fact, a nihilistic body of destruction.  The administration aim to repeal Obamacare is dismantling what was, in origin, a moderate Republican plan, instituted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.  Repealing Obamacare without adequate replacement will cause thousands of deaths, deaths that will be on Republican hands.  Here’s the point – there still exists a substantial body of relatively moderate Republicans, honorable men and women who have been belittled and marginalized by the right-wing coup.  I worked with moderate Republicans for over twenty years in our state legislature – they were often among the best educated and conscientious representatives.  And I tell you today, that they are tearing their hair out, their party in the thralls of radicals who disrespect our most basic institutions, traditions, and morality. “

Today, in Politico Magazine, Bruce Bartlett, who worked under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, set out in “Trump is What Happens When a Political Party Abandons Ideas” a cogent description of the dilemma facing the moderate, intellectual Republicans. Here’s Bartlett:  “Trump has turned out to be far, far worse than I imagined. He has instituted policies so right wing they make Ronald Reagan, for whom I worked, look like a liberal Democrat. He has appointed staff people far to the right of the Republican mainstream in many positions, and they are instituting policies that are frighteningly extreme. Environmental Protection Administration Administrator Scott Pruitt proudly denies the existence of climate change, and is doing his best to implement every item Big Oil has had on its wish list since the agency was established by Richard Nixon. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is actively hostile to the very concept of public education and is doing her best to abolish it. Every day, Attorney General Jeff Sessions institutes some new policy to take incarceration and law enforcement back to the Dark Ages. Trump’s proposed budget would eviscerate the social safety net for the sole purpose of giving huge tax cuts to the ultrawealthy.

And if those policies weren’t enough, conservatives—who, after all, believe in liberty and a system of checks and balances to restrain the government to its proper role—have plenty of reason to be upset by those actions Trump has taken that transcend our traditional right-left ideological divide. He’s voiced not only skepticism of NATO, but outright hostility to it. He’s pulled America back from its role as an international advocate for human rights. He’s attacked the notion of an independent judiciary. He personally intervened to request the FBI to ease up on its investigation of a former adviser of his, then fired FBI Director James Comey and freely admitted he did so to alleviate the pressure he felt from Comey’s investigation. For those conservatives who were tempted to embrace a “wait-and-see” approach to Trump, what they’ve seen, time and again, is almost unimaginable.”

Bartlett goes on to lay out the history of the Republican movement since the Goldwater days, noting for example that, “When I became active in the Republican Party in the mid-1970s, it was the party of thoughtful men and women who were transforming America’s domestic policies while strengthening its moral leadership on the global stage. As Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in a July 1980 New York Times article, ‘the GOP has become a party of ideas.’

And then, everything began to change.”

Bartlett describes in some depth how the Republican leadership turned away from ideas and intellect.  He notes:

“In the 14 years since then, I have watched from the sidelines as Republican policy analysis and research have virtually disappeared altogether, replaced with sound bites and talking points. The Heritage Foundation morphed into Heritage Action for America, ceasing to do any real research and losing all its best policy experts as it transformed from an august center whose focus was the study and development of public policy into one devoted mainly to amplifying political campaign slogans. Talk radio and Fox News, where no idea too complicated for a mind with a sixth-grade education is ever heard, became the tail wagging the conservative dog. Conservative magazines like National Review, which once boasted world-class intellectuals such as James Burnham and Russell Kirk among its columnists, jumped on the bandwagon, dumbing itself down to appeal to the common man, who is deemed to be the font of all wisdom.”

He notes, “With hindsight, it’s no surprise that the glorification of anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism that has been rampant on the right at least since the election of Barack Obama would give rise to someone like Trump.”   “Ideally,”  says Bartlett,  “I’d like to see an intellectual revival on the right such as we saw after the Goldwater defeat and the Watergate debacle.  Freed from the stultifying strictures and kowtowing to know-nothing Trumpian populists—perhaps building on new outlets and institutions that celebrate intellectual rigor and reject shallow sound bites—a few conservative thinkers can plow a path toward sane, responsible conservative governance, just as people like Irving Kristol and Jack Kemp did during the Carter years.”

And, here’s my point.  There is virtually nothing in Bartlett’s piece on current Republicanism that I disagree with.  The damage being done, both to his party, and our country by Trump and the “populist” right-wing agenda is transparent.  Our values are, in fact, much closer together than are those of Bartlett compared to Trump and the Right.  Was there ever a better case for making common cause? Bartlett is not alone; Bill Kristol and George Will and other Republican commentators grounded in old main-stream Republicanism literally have no where at the moment to go.  Is it really asking too much that they join us in putting an end to the Trump travesty and the hypocrisies and misgovernment of Paul Ryan and his ilk?  I think not.

The Donald Channels the Legacy of Roy Cohn

I’ve been blogging about the self-evident influence on Donald Trump of red-baiting mob lawyer Roy Cohn for some time – see The Root of All Evil.  Cohn was the evil genius, the infante terrible, behind Joe McCarthy’s red scare in the 1950s.  For years he made his living as a feared mob lawyer who operated outside the confines of law and ethics.  Cohn was totally ruthless, experienced in manipulating the legal system and the press,  adept at the use of fear and intimidation.   Cohn would stop at nothing to win.  His style was terrifyingly effective and while he was ultimately disbarred, that came only after the damage was done.  His legacy lives on because, as such, he mentored Donald Trump and many of the Trump old-time loyalists.   Cohn provides the necessary filter with which to view Trump.  Anyone tempted to underestimate what lengths Trump will go to, or what depth he will descend to, should think twice.

I’m not the only one focused on the Trump-Cohn axis.  Consider this article by Jack Shafer in Politico, “Week Four: The President Summons the Ghost of Roy Cohn.”  This is from Shafer’s lead: “Although he dumped Cohn, Trump never ceased playing the role of the dirtbag attorney’s parrot. Since inauguration, and especially since the scandal with no name has inflicted bleeding wounds all over his presidency, Trump has only become more Cohnian in his persona. He rains his fury down on his opponents, just like Cohn.  He breaks rules and bullies all who get in his way.  He does whatever it takes to win.  When Trump’s mouth forms the words, it’s really Cohn speaking from the grave.”

Shafer brings content to the charge that Trump is playing the Cohn card, detailing, for example, how Trump’s efforts to undermine Mueller’s investigation are straight from the Cohn playbook.  Another Shafer excerpt:  “How well Cohn taught Trump the basics of media and legal warfare!  Cohn acolytes like Trump learned the value of raising disagreements to disputes, disputes to legal threats, threats to lawsuits, and lawsuits to war, and war to burned-earth siege, a progression Trump has been playing on his smartphone’s keypad for weeks.  Cohn also taught Trump to shrug off IRS audits, deadbeat his personal debtors, lie whenever expedient, and file complicated, retaliatory lawsuits to pour sand in the gears of his opponents.  ‘Over a 13-year-period, ending shortly before Cohn’s death in 1986, Cohn brought his say-anything, win-at-all-costs style to all of Trump’s most notable legal and business deals,’ Politico’s Michael Kruse wrote last year.  ‘Cohn’s philosophy shaped the real estate mogul’s worldview and the belligerent public persona visible in Trump’s presidential campaign.’”

And this: “Observing no limits has been Trump’s operational philosophy for as long as anybody can remember, one that informs his current legal defense and the conduct of his administration.  Trump’s new Cohn is his long-time personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz, who also feels unbound by reality. Following James Comey’s testimony, Kasowitz issued a Cohnian statement that made a mash of the chronology and the facts. As the Atlantic‘s Matt Ford wrote earlier this month, Kasowitz sought ‘to shift the investigative cloud away from his client and onto [Comey] the man all but accusing him of obstruction of justice—a task it does not accomplish.’  Roy Cohn would be so proud!”

Shafer has much more, all worth your time.  But for the future, when The Donald tweets, or speaks, or slanders, delays, or insinuates,  remember to see that devil Roy whispering in his ear.