The Republican Party Must be Destroyed (For Its Own Good)

(Cartoon image is by Gary Varvel in The Indianapolis Star.)

Regular readers of this blog will know I am a progressive Democrat. I have never voted for a Republican, and probably never will. But that doesn't mean I think this nation only needs one political party. We have seen what happens to countries with only one party, and it isn't pretty.

Our traditional two-party system has worked pretty well. Having two parties acting as a check on each other prevents either party from turning the country into an authoritarian dictatorship. And it lets the citizens (through their vote) decide the path the country should take.

But today's Republican Party has lost its way. It is no longer a traditional conservative party. It has become a cult of personality -- following a racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic leader who has no respect for the traditional conservative principles of the party. It's now the party of Trump -- devoid of values or principles.

It needs to be decimated by voters in the 2018 and 2020 elections. That needs to happen so it can rebuild itself, and once again offer voters a real choice -- so it can shed its current cult status and once again become a real political party.

I'm not the only one who believes this. Consider this small part of an article by Max Boot in The Washington Post:

After a lifetime as a Republican, I re-registered as an independent on the day after Donald Trump’s election. . . .

I am more convinced than ever that I made the right decision. The transformation I feared has taken place. Just look at the reaction to President Trump’s barbarous policy of taking children away from their parents as punishment for the misdemeanor offense of illegally entering the country. While two-thirds of Americans disapproved of this state-sanctioned child abuse, forcing the president to back down, a majority of Republicans approved. If Trump announced he were going to spit-roast immigrant kids and eat them on national TV (apologies to Jonathan Swift), most Republicans probably would approve of that, too. The entire Republican platform can now be reduced to three words: whatever Trump says. . . .

Personally, I’ve thrown up my hands in despair at the debased state of the GOP. I don’t want to be identified with the party of the child-snatchers. But I respect principled conservatives who are willing to stay and fight to reclaim a once-great party that freed the slaves and helped to win the Cold War. What I can’t respect are head-in-the-sand conservatives who continue to support the GOP by pretending that nothing has changed.

They act, these political ostriches, as if this were still the party of Ronald Reagan and John McCain rather than of Stephen K. Bannon and Stephen Miller — and therefore they cling to the illusion that supporting Republican candidates will advance their avowed views. Wrong. The current GOP still has a few resemblances to the party of old — it still cuts taxes and supports conservative judges. But a vote for the GOP in November is also a vote for egregious obstruction of justice, rampant conflicts of interest, the demonization of minorities, the debasement of political discourse, the alienation of America’s allies, the end of free trade and the appeasement of dictators.

That is why I join . . . other principled conservatives, both current and former Republicans, in rooting for a Democratic takeover of both houses in November. Like postwar Germany and Japan, the Republican Party must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.