The GOP Hydra after the Trump Debacle

The Three-Headed GOP After Trump - Today’s Republicans are—like Caesar’s Gaul—divided into three distinct parts

Excerpt:

1. Establishment conservatives reflect the interests of corporate America. They favor free trade, immigration reform, and well-targeted public investment. They are broadly internationalist and mostly support the treaties and institutions through which the United States exercises global influence. They believe in climate change and can live with reasonable measures to abate it. They want corporate tax reform, but not at the expense of provisions in the current code that benefit their economic sectors. They would like individual tax reform but already can use the current code to minimize their effective tax rate. They believe in “entitlement reform” but would accept revenue increases along with it—the ever-elusive “grand bargain” at the heart of blue-ribbon commissions.
2. Second come the small-town, small-government conservatives who channel the anxieties and antipathies of the National Federation of Independent Business and whose sentiments pervade the Paul Ryan-House Republican manifesto, “A Better Way.” They believe—passionately—that government is the principal obstacle to growth. They insist on major tax cuts, especially in the individual code through which their unincorporated businesses are taxed, and fervently reject any new taxes. They favor reductions in domestic spending (especially welfare), structural changes in Medicare and Medicaid, and an all-out assault on the regulatory state. Compared to their corporate brethren, their outlook is more nationalist. They mostly depend on the domestic market rather than exports and frown on institutions such as the Export-Import Bank, which they regard as corporate welfare. They are not invited to meetings at Davos.
3. And lastly, we reach the populist conservatives, many of them working class, about whom so much has been written in this election cycle. They mistrust all large institutions, especially the federal government, but they do not have an ideological preference for smaller government. They depend on costly programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Disability Insurance and stand to benefit from the expanded infrastructure investments that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have proposed. They see large corporations as indifferent, even hostile, to their interests and concerns. They view the world outside the United States more as a threat than an opportunity. So they oppose trade agreements as well as large immigration flows and are suspicious of the obligations that alliances such as NATO impose on the U.S. Like Mr. Trump, they regard such arrangements, on balance, as burdens rather than benefits. For them, “America First” is more than a slogan; it is a demand. ...
4. The religious right – who sincerely oppose abortion and homosexuality.
5. Plus, what about another set of culture warriors – the so-called "alt-right", the Breitbart gang, who reek of racial politics, white nationalism, and conspiratorial craziness? This group used to be ignored, but emerged when Trump hired Steve Bannon and Mike Roman. Having broken into the light of the mainstream media, they are unlikely to disappear soon.

Comment: 4 and 5 are from the comment section. I'm a blend of 1,2 & 4. As to the Trump Debacle: wait 15 days (see my prediction). My take is that the Alt-Right is toxic to the GOP

Updated:

Update on 10/26:

Republicans Rode Waves of Populism Until They Crashed the Party

Long stereotyped as home to the country-club crowd, bankers and big business, the party is increasingly driven by anxious working-class voters, small-town business people and middle-aged Americans. At the same time, the cultural conservatism that attracted new voters to the Republican Party has repelled some upscale suburban voters who had long been reliable Republicans.

The upshot is a changed electoral-college landscape that in many ways favors Democrats.

Thus was the table set for Mr. Trump. He brought incomparable celebrity swagger to this year’s presidential race, and benefited from Republican distrust of longtime party leaders and positions. Speaking directly to that exasperation enabled Mr. Trump to upend a generation of conservative orthodoxy. “I’m an outsider and I won the primaries,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in June. “I competed along with a lot of establishment people. I beat them all.”

George Will on #Conservatism https://t.co/A77GJPVRyH pic.twitter.com/c0ESpfUocV

— 𝓙𝓲𝓶 𝓟𝓮𝓮𝓽 (@jrpeet) June 1, 2019

Conservatives should heed Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous advice that culture, not politics, determines a society’s success, writes @BobbyJindal https://t.co/YvGoJU1Qm9 via @WSJ

— 𝓙𝓲𝓶 𝓟𝓮𝓮𝓽 (@jrpeet) July 2, 2019

“Fornigate" - the height of hypocrisy

House of Pain: GOP's Class of '94

Excerpts:

The sex scandals that have tarnished Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) don’t appear to have much in common. Yet there is one thread that binds them together: Both Ensign and Sanford were members of the famed Republican House class of 1994, as well as its latest casualties.

As it turns out, the pressures and demands of political life have inflicted devastating damage not only on the Ensign and Sanford families, but on the families of many of the 71 other freshmen who formed the vanguard of the Republican Revolution.

In the 14 years since that star-crossed class arrived in Washington espousing an agenda that placed family values at its core, no less than a dozen of its members have been caught up in affairs, sex scandals or in messy separations and divorces from their spouses that, in more than a few instances, led to their political downfalls.

The problems started almost as soon as they took office, and by the end of their first year in Congress, the marriages of at least four Republican freshmen had collapsed.

One of the first to see his marriage unravel was Rep. Jim Bunn (R-Ore.) who, not long after taking office in 1995, divorced his wife, married one of his political aides, and later elevated her to chief of staff. Bunn lost his 1996 reelection bid.

Rep. Enid Greene, who became the first female member of Congress from Utah in 1994, spent most of her single term in the House dealing with a scandal of her husband’s making. Joe Waldholtz, who married Greene in 1993, embezzled millions of dollars that he used to help finance her campaign. Once authorities finally caught up with Waldholtz, Greene filed for divorce and took custody of the couple’s daughter. She did not run for reelection in 1996.

Former Rep. Jon Christensen (R-Neb.) was another high-profile casualty—he divorced his wife during his first term after she admitted to marital infidelity.

...

Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) got divorced in 1999. Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) and his wife Susan divorced after she accused him of having an affair with his former chief of staff, who he later married.

The GOP Senate Class of 1994 was not immune from family break-up either--Rod Grams, a conservative former House member, split up with his wife in 1996 and went on to marry a member of his staff. The well-publicized divorce was a significant factor in his 2000 re-election defeat.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who resigned his seat in 2006, was in a class by himself—he was forced to step down after becoming embroiled in a controversy involving sexually-explicit messages he sent to young Capitol Hill pages.

...

“They all came to town on this great family values train with Newt Gingrich as the engineer,” recalled former Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.). “Then it all started crumbling. It seemed like the louder they talked the more divorces they got.”

Unlike other freshman classes, this one “came in high and mighty,” Schroeder added, a consequence of the dramatic shift in the balance of power in Washington.

“They drank the Kool-Aid and believed their own press,” she said. “Maybe they just thought ‘I’m a much bigger deal than my family now.’”

Linda Killian, author of a book about the 1994 Republican class called, “The Freshmen: What Happened to the Republican Revolution?” said the disconnect between the family values message the freshmen espoused and their messy personal lives has become all too glaring over the years.

“They came in with such high ambition and on such a self-proclaimed moral high ground,” Killian said. “Especially for guys who professed that they were setting a higher standard, they failed at the benchmark they set for themselves.”

Indeed, a decade-and-a-half later, some of their statements seem naïve—or just plain ironic. In a 1998 interview with Congressional Quarterly, Sanford and his wife, Jenny, spoke candidly about how serving in Congress was “not an ideal lifestyle,” as Jenny put it at the time.

“Just look at the divorce rate of our class,” then-Rep. Mark Sanford told CQ. “We’re not exactly bettering the national average.”

Comment: Do you see the problem here? The GOP holding up the "Family Values" banner is a joke! The medium is the message. If our leaders don't have family values, the message is null and void. Contrast the noted liberal Al Franken who is in a long standing traditional marriage.

The GOP is doomed if our leaders cannot keep their pants on!

A Classical School Conservative

Little Mr. Conservative

Excerpt:

He’s an unusual kid with an unusual background. Jonathan’s parents, Doug, a computer systems integrator, and Marla, a sales representative and former actress who teaches drama and speech to middle-school students, have been home-schooling their bright, curious son since the sixth grade. On Fridays, Jonathan joins 10 middle-school students at the Classical School in Woodstock, where classes are taught from a Christian perspective, for five hours of study, including Latin. They have two 10-minute recesses for tag, said Jonathan’s teacher, Stephen P. Gilchrist. Lunch is eaten at their desks while they work.

“Other children his age are not quite sure how to take him,” Mr. Gilchrist said. “Jonathan is so intense, so verbal and a strong personality. But as they get to know him, they respect him for what he is. And he is tons of fun.”

Jonathan’s father oversees his math; he studies Arabic with a tutor.

“Before I got into politics,” Jonathan said as he sat with his parents in the study of their home, “I wanted to be a missionary to people in the Middle East. I thought it would be better to speak with them in their own language.” The family are active members of Peachtree Corners Baptist Church in Norcross, Ga.

Comment: Note he attends a "Classical School" ... where real education takes place!

Liberals are cheapskates!

Bleeding Heart Tightwads

Excerpt:

Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.

Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

Other research has reached similar conclusions. The “generosity index” from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so.

The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans — the ones who try to cut health insurance for children.

...

Americans give sums to charity equivalent to 1.67 percent of G.N.P., according to a terrific new book, “Philanthrocapitalism,” by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. The British are second, with 0.73 percent, while the stingiest people on the list are the French, at 0.14 percent.

...

Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent.

Comment: Interesting.

Newt Q&A on 9/11 and more

Newt Gingrich Answers Your Questions

Comment: A really excellent read. I only excerpt a brief portion.

Excerpt:

In the American conception, as stated powerfully by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, all are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. This proposition was among the most radical in history and it turned on its head the way in which people were governed. We no longer conceived of individual rights as coming from a king or monarch or dictator. In 1776, we asserted the self-evident truth that rights came from God to the individual, and that collectively, the people loaned power to their elected leaders. It is this self-evident truth that is the key to any sustainable democracy — the individual is sovereign and primary, while the state is servant and secondary.

What we face worldwide in the aftermath of 9/11 isn’t a conflict between different models of government; it’s a conflict between the civilized world — which respects the rights of men and women and includes people of all countries and all faiths, including Islam — and the irreconcilable wing of Islam, which is so totally at odds with the civilized world’s views of the rights of the individual that there is no way to reconcile the two world views. Conflict is unavoidable. Certainly, the promotion of democracy is a strategy that should be employed, but it has to include property rights, equality for women and people of other faiths, and the other bulwarks of successful democracies that protect the individual from the power of the state.

Noonan breaks with Bush

Peggy Noonan: President Bush has torn the conservative coalition asunder

Excerpt:

The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me. For others the beginning of distance might have been Katrina and the incompetence it revealed, or the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq.

What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom--a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don't need hacks.

...

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time.


Comments:

1. Disagree with Noonan: I like the President's immigration plan
   
2. Agree with Noonan: I don't see the need for the U.S. to bring democracy to every land
   
3. Conclusion: I would like to see a true Reaganesque style Republican lead our party. Brownback and Huckabee strike me Reaganesque conservatives!