The GOP is dead. Democrats and former Republicans need to set aside old animosities and join together to save democracy.
Conservatives need to wake up to the fact they no longer have a political home, and that their only hope of having one in the future depends on keeping the democracy alive now.
Donald Trump and his MAGA movement have vanquished the old GOP. It’s time the media and America’s corporate leaders figure out the rules have changed.
For one thing, the direction of the GOP is no longer subject to wishes of corporate leaders. They didn’t pick Mr. Trump. They don’t even like him. They know he poses a threat to the democracy. Yet they continue to support him and his party. Why?
Embarrassingly, it is because they are content to trade their role as leaders in our country for the subservient role of courtiers. Instead of playing a role in shaping American policy and our leadership in the world, they will instead flatter for favors. Corporate bigwigs now opine in alpine settings that the world will be fine with a second Trump presidency. They say he was right about various things- though the things they point to are absurd. Instead of mentioning the only real accomplishments of the Trump administration, pushing for a COVID vaccine and negotiating the Abraham Accords, they point to China policy and immigration. These are interesting choices, because while Trump identified real problems in both areas, his solutions were catastrophic. Stealing children from parents at the border was morally indefensible and did not solve problem of migration. Hastily imposing tariffs and trade barriers with China inflationary pressures and forced his own administration to spend billions bailing out US farmers. The corporate courtiers know this. They also know that Trump will reward them for their pretending they do not.
They need to wake up. The MAGA movement is not like the old GOP. Mr. Trump’s continued relevance depends on his ability to keep radicalizing his base. At some point, that base is going to make demands on corporate America that make Democratic policies look positively bullish. If you doubt it, just remember what Ron DeSantis and his crowd did to Disney. The MAGA power respects no rules.
Pretending there is still the old GOP, is making believe that supporting the party’s leaders is about policy choices. It isn’t. Gone are the principled conservatives who stood for a limited government with a strong foreign policy that defended freedom around the globe. Mr. Trump promises:
to use the power of government to reward friends and punish rivals
to overturn environmental protections
to give more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans
to dismantle the civil service
to walk away from NATO
to give Russia and China their spheres of influence- redrawing the global map to favor dictators at the costs of freedom for hundreds of millions
to radically reshape America too- along Christian nationalist and authoritarian lines
Instead of standing up to this, today’s conservatives are allowing their old antipathy towards Democrats turn them into fools. Conservatives need to wake up to the fact they no longer have a political home, and that their only hope of having one in the future depends on keeping the democracy alive now. That means common cause with Democrats this election cycle. They can take comfort in the conservative icon Edmond Burke’s admonishing that there are no permanent friends in politics, only permanent interests.
The media, too, needs to wake up. They continue to cover the election like they covered previous contests between Democrats and Republicans. In this new reality, their old methods have been co-opted by Mr. Trump. News organizations seem to think postmortem fact checks will somehow absolve them for giving hours of airtime to candidates who use that time to lie repeatedly to the American people. They have slipped from both sides meaning liberal and conservative to both sides meaning truth and lies, without stopping to consider that their mission actually depends on telling the truth.
Democrats, who do understand the nature of the threat, need to think a few steps ahead. The collapse of the country’s right of center party must not push Democrats further left in this moment. America is still, in some ways, a conservative place. In the short term, defeating Trumpism means welcoming many of these now politically homeless conservatives to the fight. That does not mean Democrats should adopt conservative policy positions. It means, rather, that we should avoid rhetorical responses to MAGA provocation that are designed to push us to places otherwise patriotic conservatives cannot go.
The collapse of the GOP means we are in a new politics. If we see if for what it is, we will emerge with a stronger democracy and be in the best position to lead the world for the rest of this century.