This week in Milwaukee, the Republican Party will officially nominate a man who has committed a series of reprehensible firsts: the first president to be impeached twice, the first to deny his defeat, the first to resist the peaceful transfer of power, and the first to be criminally convicted. Then, voters will decide.
For the good of the party, Americans should vote against all of its candidates, from Donald Trump to the dogcatcher, and do so regardless of whether Joe Biden or someone else is the Democratic nominee. To save the once Great Party, voters must destroy it.
Let's call it the “burn it all down” project, with apologies to veteran Republican strategist Stuart Stevens. Four years ago he said of his former radicalized party: on CNN:“Just burn it and start again.”
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Voters lit a match in 2020 and early 2021, ousting Trump from the White House and then Republicans from control of the Senate. In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans won a majority in the House, but just barely; the predicted red wave was a trickle, and Trump got the blame. In recent years, under Trump’s extremist MAGA banner — because of its flag — the party's candidates have lost numerous local and state elections in which they were favored to win.
Yet at every level of government, too many of Trump’s enablers remain in office. Republicans have not broken with Trumpism, and Trump himself has emerged from the infamy of the insurrection to become the party’s standard-bearer for a third time.
And its resurgence comes just as it has been criminally. accused four times; convicted once (of 34 New York State felonies); found civilly liable for financial fraud, sexual abuse and defamation (twice); and fined almost Half a billion dollars. None of that matters in a party that has become a cult of personality, built on the grievances of Trump and his supporters. His legal troubles only fuel self-pity.
So here we are, with a convicted felon and congenital liar bent on revenge, trying to get back into the White House, and his pliant party trying to take back the Senate and hold on to the House. The maverick Stevens, among others, has renewed and expanded his call to defeat them all.
“You know, pain is the best teacher in politics, possibly the only teacher,” he said. saying on PBS in April. “And what has to happen is that the Republicans have to lose, and they have to lose again and again. And then, out of some sense of self-preservation, you might see a sensible party emerge.”
Historically, parties have responded to electoral rejection by looking inward, fighting over new platforms and promoting new leaders. That's what Republicans did after their Watergate-era defeats a half-century ago, and Democrats did after their Reagan-era drubbings.
But Trump defies political norms, and so far he has defied the one that says parties won’t support losers. Clearly, more defeats are needed to return the party to moderation, to sanity, at the grassroots level. As Stevens suggests, a party cannot survive repeated defeats; it would have no choice but to reform.
Stevens doesn’t think a more traditional center-right Republican Party can emerge before 2032. And it’s a fantasy to think it will ever go back to what it was: a small-government rather than anti-government party that favors free trade, immigration and international engagement, opposes tyranny and is fiscally conservative but at peace with a government-run safety net. Accommodations will have to be made with the far right.
That said, the nation needs a healthy conservative party for the sake of our democracy. Today's Republican Party is neither healthy nor conservative. It is extremist.
As Stevens described it to me, the party whose candidates he helped elect for decades has gone from being the “beating heart” of the country’s anti-communist opposition to being openly “pro-Putin.” It is “at war with the modern world. And it’s losing.” He cited Republicans’ culture wars with American corporations, iconic brands and celebrities, including Nike, Disney, NASCAR and Taylor Swift.
Republicans continue to claim to be the party of law and order, and yet, Stevens noted, their hostility toward the FBI has supplanted their antagonism toward left-wing extremist groups, and they back Trump’s promise to pardon “thugs who attacked police officers defending the Capitol.” The party is so anti-government that it opposes mandatory vaccinations in schools, prompting Stevens to lament, “Do so many people really miss polio?”
Stevens is not the only current and former Republican who has been forced to adopt his burn-it-all stance. George Will, long the favorite columnist of traditional Republicans, four years ago urged Voters would reject the party across the board, from Trump to “his enablers in Congress, especially the senators who still frolic around his ankles with a canine hunger for cuddles.” Such a rejection, Will wrote, would be “justified punishment for his Vichy collaboration.”
Republican senators have become more puppyish, more eager for Trump’s favors and more deserving of defeat. The same is true of House Republicans, who have long been Trump’s lapdogs and an impediment to good governance.
Liz Cheney, once a member of Republican Party royalty, began campaigning for the defeats of his candidates in 2022. “We can survive bad politics,” he said, to justify his support for Democrats, even those with whom he has strong disagreements. “We cannot survive a leader who is going to burn the Constitution.”
His fellow Republican on the House January 6 committee, former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, joined another Republican, former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, last month in announcing his support for Biden. Kinzinger founded three years ago The country first to help defeat “toxic partisans” who deny elections.
Big losses in 2024 (notably Trump's) would only be a start in forcing the GOP to rethink what it has become and reorganize, but it would be a big step.
Let the (new) party begin!
@jackiekcalmes
