It bears remembering here that the Republican administration of George W. Bush was the first to embrace Erdogan, sticking by him as he re-Islamized Turkey and brutally suppressed dissent. Those were the heady days of “Islamic democracy” promotion when Republicans assured us that sharia and freedom were perfectly compatible. And now, as Trump blows kisses at the rapacious Vladimir Putin and signals to the Times that he is ready to abandon our nation’s NATO treaty obligation to defend the Baltics from Russian aggression, it similarly bears remembering that it was Bush who first proclaimed Putin trustworthy — a strategic partner — upon gazing into his eyes and examining his soul.
For these post-Reagan Republicans, conservative was passé. They needed to be “compassionate conservatives,” as if there were something vaguely inhumane about the liberty enterprise. Government was no longer the “necessary evil” envisioned by the Framers, the butt of the Gipper’s aforementioned quip. It was our beneficent guardian who “has got to move” whenever “somebody hurts.” These Republicans doubled the national debt before Obama came along to double it again. The new and improved GOP swelled the size and scope of government; created new entitlements even as the existing ones were bankrupting us; enacted “campaign-finance reform” well aware that it flouted the First Amendment; and derided their own base as racist xenophobes for resisting amnesty for illegal aliens. And was there any Obama overreach that they weren’t happy to foot the bill for?
Take away the conservatism, the limited-government constitutionalism, the devotion to liberty, the fiscal discipline, the clear-eyed recognition of America’s enemies, and what are you left with? A Republican party whose only real boast is that it can do statism with more adult moderation than the hard Left that has captured the Democratic party. To the extent that, a generation ago, “Republican” was fairly thought synonymous with “conservative,” it thus became a party “Republican” in name only — a party in which all principles were negotiable.
That made it a party ripe to be taken over by Donald Trump. But what is now officially Trump’s party has not been my party for quite some time.
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