Several political parties in America have come and gone since the revolutionary days of Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists, but none has died a long and painful public death like that currently playing out within the once Grand Old Party (GOP).
For those not familar with the hit TV show The Walking Dead, it follows the lives of survivors infected by some unknown virus that later turns dying people into zombie-like corpses, with just enough brain power left to roam aimlessly, thirsty for blood, and rotting away until someone delivers a death blow to the head.
Today’s Republican Party traces its roots back to the time of Abraham Lincoln when former Whigs and Know-Nothing Party followers came together to oppose slavery, united against the popular Democratic Party. In general, the GOP stood for the rule of law, strictly following the Constitution, and protecting minority groups from the tyranny of the majority.
In the last century, Republicans became the party of strong national defense, reduced taxes, and adherence to traditional family values, especially opposing abortion rights. Eisenhower. Nixon. Reagan. Bush. No, not that Bush, the first Bush. That was the GOP.
Reagan and his war hawks stood up to the Russians and ended up breaking the Soviet Union, but also ran up a huge national debt in the process. Reaganomics held that reduced taxes would grow the economy. Reagan became the new Lincoln; the symbol of conservatism that seemed to cement the Party’s image for the long-term future.
But in the early 2000s, the Party took a sudden turn toward partisanship that put battles over the national budget and same-sex marriage on the front burner, and left the bigger goals of conservatism behind. Republicans bet the farm on winning elections by driving wedge social issues and looked for ways to beat back the gains made by the Democrats with their very popular Bill Clinton.
In 2008, the Republicans suffered a devastating blow when a little known, first-term US Senator named Barack Hussein Obama beat a Vietnam war hero and standard-bearer in John McCain.
A harbinger of things to come, the Republicans chose Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate. The Party celebrated her anti-establishment rants and humored her lack of policy issues as down to earth. Her renegade outsider appeal was fueled by a loud and growing group of unconventional supporters.
Licking their wounds after the 2008 election, the Republicans turned to that growing group of anti-government conservatives that had been around for years but had never before been welcomed into the tent: the Tea Party.
Tea Party activists were more Libertarian than Republican in their views of smaller government, virtually no market regulation, and an abhorrence toward compromise on deficit spending. In the lead up to the 2010 elections, Republicans, desperate to win seats in Congress to oppose Obama’s new liberal agenda, let Tea Partiers into the big tent and promoted their outsider candidates in races across the country. And they won. Big.
Republicans picked up 63 seats and won back a majority in the House of Representatives, paving the way for their new Speaker of the House, John Boehner. As Republicans celebrated the victory, few within the party realized that was the beginning of the end. The newly elected Tea Party members of Congress joined together in what they call the Freedom Caucus and began to oppose everything, even Republican budget plans.
Their new Speaker began having trouble putting together enough votes to block Democrats. Over and over in 2011 and 2012, Democrats outmaneuvered the fractured Republicans to pass important legislation and secured judicial appointments.
By the time of President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, Republicans were desperate for a win. Throughout their crowded primary season, Tea Party-backed candidates like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain spiked but eventually faded as the Party sought a consensus candidate that could win the general election. In the end, they didn’t support a traditional party loyalist; instead they backed a former Massachusetts governor with a mixed history of supporting universal health care and having been a Wall Street raider. Mitt Romney was no one’s first choice but ended up being their nominee.
One outsider that Republicans did welcome as a vocal opponent of President Obama was Donald Trump, the brash billionaire that paid investigators to find Obama’s birth certificate in hopes of proving the conspiracy theory that a Kenyan was occupying the White House. What seemed like support for Romney turned out to lower the bar in presidential campaigns when Trump used baseless allegations and bald-faced lies, along with his constant threat to run himself, as an acceptable way to run for President.
Today, when we turn on the TV and see the middle school level debate between the remaining Republican candidates, we shouldn’t have to ask how we got here. Trump is preying on the anger of those same Tea Party supporters that were unknown just six years ago. The Republicans welcomed and nurtured those outsider views and unconventional tactics in their desperation to win, and now those forces are out of their control.
Donald Trump is crushing Cruz and Kasich and already vanquished the Party’s darling, Marco Rubio. He says he wants to build a HUUUUUGE wall with Mexico and keep all Muslims out. He says he’ll bring back jobs from China. He says a lot of things. He even says he doesn’t really mean all those things he says. And that man is steamrolling toward the nomination.
Leading up to this week’s Florida and Ohio primaries, Party leaders advocated a divide-and-conquer strategy of cross-supporting Marco Rubio in Florida and John Kasich in Ohio just to deny Trump the delegates he needs to clinch the nomination outright. That would lead to a brokered convention where delegates would be able to choose a candidate regardless of the primary election results. Romney and current House Speaker Paul Ryan have been rumored to be backup candidates for just such a play.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave.
The Republican Party went from proposing grand policies to help shape the world, to now trying to short circuit the electoral process. Many Republicans point to the 1976 Republican Convention as a similar situation, but that’s not even close.
That year, President Gerald Ford was being challenged by former California Governor and future President Ronald Reagan. Sure, they had policy differences, but the fight was not for the soul of the Party like it is today.
If a brokered convention yields a compromise candidate after voters have overwhelmingly chosen Donald Trump, it will spell the death of the Party as we know it and the birth of, most likely, two parties; the Tea Party and the remnants of the old GOP.
Maybe the website domain for NewKnowNothings.com is still available.