The Death of the GOP

When I first wrote about the presidential election last year, I was optimistic. I saw a field full of young, diverse, and qualified Republican candidates, with almost all of them capable of beating likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, a candidate who suffered from low favorability. Looking back on it now, I can see that I – and many others – failed to recognize the systemic problems with the Republican Party, starting with those very candidates I once spoke so highly of.

It is immensely difficult to pinpoint the exact date that the Republican Party died, considering that it has been on the decline for quite a while. It will likely continue to exist as a sort of zombified version of its former self, at least for the near future. But for me, July 14^th, 2016, is the date that marks the death of the Republican Party – insofar as it is a party that represents the political philosophy of conservatism. On that date, the rules committee for the Republican National Convention voted against a proposal (the so-called “conscience clause”) that would have freed primary delegates to vote their conscience for the party’s nominee. In doing so, the committee all but guaranteed that the Republican Party would do the unthinkable and nominate Donald Trump as its presidential candidate.

I choose this particular event to mark the death of the Republican Party because it epitomizes everything wrong with the party. The conscience clause died without debate or a roll call vote – its opponents lacked the conviction to make their opinions known, and they were so afraid of dissent and so committed to party loyalty that they squashed any and all opposition without hesitation. This action removed the last obstacle in the path of the nomination of Donald Trump, a man totally lacking any sort of conservative beliefs.

Many are quick to blame Republican voters for Trump’s nomination, and while I do hold them responsible to some degree, the true blame lies at the feet of the Republican Party itself. Today’s GOP is a party of cowards, full of politicians who care not for actual principles. The way in which the party has caved to Trump so completely is at once both totally horrifying and completely unsurprising. At some point, the GOP decided that party unity is more important than having a coherent political philosophy. People who supposedly were the future of the party, people who supposedly represented a new, principled brand of conservatism, proved themselves to be totally without integrity. Marco Rubio, who famously denounced Trump as a “con man”, pledged his support to Trump. Susanna Martinez, whom Trump viciously attacked with falsehoods and untruths, lent her support to him as well. The list of those who gave at least tepid support goes on and on. Many others – such as John Kasich and Jeb Bush – simply remained quiet rather than give an endorsement. While their silence was intended to be a condemnation of Trump, it instead spoke volumes about their integrity. In the end, Ted Cruz was anointed the savior of true conservatism for his speech at the convention, a label which he in no way deserves. Cruz’s speech was not some brave stand; it was at best a weak rebuke of man who deserved far harsher words. It was too little, too late, especially coming from Cruz, a man who spent the first half of the Republican Primary praising Trump at every turn.

Donald Trump’s nomination is the result of a GOP that has lost its way. Many working class voters felt that the Republican Party didn’t care about their problems – and they were right. And the working class isn’t the only group the Republican Party doesn’t care about. To paraphrase Kanye West: The Republican Party does not care about black people. It does not care about Hispanics, or Latinos, the LGBTQ community, or really any minority group. Sure, there are individual Republican politicians who care about those groups, but as a whole the GOP has simply accepted that those groups will not vote for Republicans and as a result has simply given up on courting their vote and enacting policies to help them. Even after its infamous 2012 autopsy indicated that Republicans needed to reach out to minorities, the GOP took no substantive action, and instead has chosen to nominate a candidate who seems committed to driving Hispanics away from the party.

Now, even if one accepts everything that I have just said as true, I understand that many Republicans will be reluctant to support anyone besides their party’s nominee, as the alternative – Hillary Clinton – is so bad. I agree that Clinton is a terrible candidate, unfit to hold the office of the presidency, and will do harm to this country if she is elected. But I believe the same things about Donald Trump. The fact that he is a Republican does not alleviate that fact. As it turns out, I am not a conservative because I don’t like Democrats. If disagreeing with Democrats is all it took to be a conservative, then socialists, communists, and anarchists all would be conservatives. I reject the idea that American politics must make a binary choice between two sides, and whatever side they choose they must stick with no matter what. I cannot and will not support a candidate who is not conservative. Party loyalty must not triumph over ideology. It is that exact attitude – caring more about a candidate’s party than their actual positions –that got the GOP into its current situation. All voters need to vote for someone is that they label themselves a Republican. At this point, the reanimated corpse of Karl Marx could run for president, and as long as he put an “R” next to his name Republicans would come out in droves to vote for him – after all, I’m sure he’d be considered “anti-establishment.”

By voting for Donald Trump, Republicans have made him the face of the Party, and electing him will turn the GOP into the Party of Trump (even more so than it already is), a thought almost too frightening to consider. And even if Trump loses and the Party decides to fully repudiate him, the damage will have already been done. Beyond the potentially irreparable harm Trump has done to the Party’s image, the GOP will still be made up of politicians who by and large supported Trump. I once admired people like Tom Cotton, Nikki Haley, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio. Now, I’m not sure if I could bring myself to vote for any of them, knowing that when they were forced to choose between their Party and their principles, they chose wrong.

The most frustrating part of this entire ordeal is that for many, Donald Trump represents conservatism, and that could not be farther from the truth. Donald Trump believes in a gross brand of white identity politics that is based on inciting a fear of those who are different. Whatever that political philosophy is, it is certainly not conservatism, and I do not subscribe to it. I am not a conservative because I hate immigrants, women, poor people, and Muslims. I could list a thousand different reasons why I consider myself a conservative, but above all, I am a conservative for one reason: I believe that conservativism is best for all Americans, regardless of gender, race, class, sexuality, or anything else. I just wish there was a political party that felt the same way.