TRUMP AND THE PARTY OF LINCOLN

How many Republican legislators have stopped, for one moment, to reflect on what the Grand Old Party stands for today and how totally disconnected they are from the voters that elected them. The latter have already shown defection as reflected by the suburban and urban middle class voting in Virginia. The legislative representatives also have to bear the responsibility for their failure to act in their Party and Country’s interest. They have allowed the Party to become the purveyor of mendacious Donald Trump’s meaningless, anarchistic, illegal, racist, sexist and unpatriotic drivel, rather than represent their constituencies’ day to day needs. 

It is not an exaggeration to conclude that the Republican Party and what it represented two years ago is no longer. 

The recent “Tax Reform” Bill and the maneuverings surrounding it, the response to Bill Moore’s Senate candidacy in Alabama as well as their enablement of the psychotic - like behavior of President Trump, who is the mouthpiece of the Republican Party, is indicative of a Party that has lost its way. Unless they act the GOP will irreversibly become the party of Donald J. Trump - an illiterate amoral con man. What that in fact will represent is uncertain because thus far Trump has reneged on all his populist promises and changes his viewpoint in the blink of a tweet.

Other than their sycophants at Fox News, a few of the most outlandish talk show radio hosts and leaders of the alt right such as Steve Bannon and David Duke, formerly of the Klu Klux Klan, the current Republican Legislature and President are devoid of backing of any of the intellectuals and policy makers that have provided the cerebral and rational basis for the Party since its formation in the mid nineteenth century. Missing in action are op ed writers such as Charles Krauthammer, Bill Krystal and George Wills. Even pundits like Karl Rove who was George Bush’s brain and a prolific fund raiser is nowhere to be seen. Every TV Channel has former Republican pundits, operatives and intellects bemoaning the death of the Republican Party as they understood it to be.

It is thus an appropriate moment to reflect on the history of the Party of Lincoln, that fought a war to end slavery, and assess what Trump has done to its legacy.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE GRAND OLD PARTY

This once proud institution, which has been, at times, in the forefront of cultural, political and economic change in the country since the time of Lincoln, seemingly now only legislatively represents a group of immensely rich donors lead by the Koch Brothers. Historically, even when the GOP was not in the majority they were on the side of progress. For example, they, under the Leadership of Senator, Everett Dirksen, helped midwife the Civil Rights Legislation that enforced the Twenty - Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Without Dirksen and the Republican support Lyndon Johnson’s and Martin Luther King’s great Civil Rights revolution would have not have happened. The father of their conservative philosophy, Barry Goldwater, was in the three man Republican deputation that led to Nixon resigning. Ronald Reagan, whatever one may think of his economic philosophy, at least had a coherent one. 

Besides Lincoln there were other Republican Presidents who looked after the “little man” notably Theodore Roosevelt who was the “Square Deal” POTUS. He smashed the trusts and monopolies and regulated railroads, food and drugs. He was a conservationist and can be considered the father of National Parks. (Incidentally it was Nixon who founded the Environment Protection Society, (EPA), that Trump is willfully, maliciously and with malice of forethought smashing). Then there was Eisenhower who consolidated the post war boom by massive infrastructure spending, provided graduate education for the troops, increased taxes on the rich to the extent that the highest level was ninety percent, sent the army to Little Rock Arkansas to ensure desegregation of the schools and ominously warned that the military - industrial complex would take over America. 

This is some of the history of a Party that helped put into practice what is in the Constitution and its Amendments. 

WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OFFICIALLY STANDS FOR AND THEIR CONSTITUENCIES

The two bedrock policy pillars that the Republican Party supposedly stands for are being systematically trashed by their own Representatives - not to mention Trump. These are social and fiscal conservatism. Their constituencies of late have been the Christian Evangelicals who have all but ensured victory in the Southern States and the suburban upper and middle class, predominantly white, fiscally conservative voters. 

The Republican Party, who have been the self appointed arbiters of public morality, have all but ignored the allegations against Roy Moore, the GOP Senate candidate for Alabama. The accusations amount to child molestation. Initially there was ambivalence at backing the controversial ex judge but as the electoral date closes in there is at best silence. “Let the people of Alabama decide”, is the position of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Needless to say the head of the GOP, Donald J. Trump, is openly supportive and has heartily endorsed the Republican candidate. Trump has been joined by the National Republican Party Committee. Apparently a seat in the Senate is worth more than the value system of the Party. All Moore needed was their tacit support as no Democrat has been elected to national office in Alabama in thirty years. This go ahead has seen a flurry of billboards across the state with messages such as, “Jesus was also falsely accused”.

Now for those that need reminding the POTUS himself is a self confessed sexual assaulter with a string of complainants. The selfsame Republican Party’s Legislative representatives impeached Bill Clinton in relation to a consensual sex affair where he allegedly committed treason and blasphemy since the behavior took place in the Oval Office. Sorry, Jay H. Ell forgets, the indictment had nothing to do with sex it was about lying. Now if the moral police believe that lying deserves impeachment Trump is accredited with seventeen hundred in the first three hundred and forty days in office - five big fat material lies a day.

So much for their adherence to social conservatism……

Their commitment to fiscal conservatism is a joke. The two parameters of fiscal conservatism being defined, mainly as, low taxes and low public expenditure especially on “welfare projects”. The measurement of success or failure in affecting the policy is whether the Government ends up spending more or less than it gets in, i.e. the deficit. The only debate about Trump’s and the GOP’s  “Tax Reform” legislation is whether it produces a trillion or a trillion and a half dollars deficit. It provides a massive tax cut for corporations and rich individuals and their heirs. Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House and third in succession to the Presidency has more than intimated that the shortfall can be made up at the cost of Social Security and Medicare. 

The good news is that there has to be an agreed Bill by the House and Senate which at present have marked differences. For example both chambers had different strategies to keep the deficit below one and a half trillion dollars. The House Republicans who are in more contact with their constituencies made no changes to Obamacare while the Senate made adjustments that released over three hundred billion dollars for tax cuts for the rich. 

So much for the commitment to fiscal conservatism……

The Republican Party have stood for much else. They believed in the three independent branches in Government, that all citizens had equal rights and were against bigotry and racialism just for starters. All this has also been forgotten.

WHAT TRUMP GOT ELECTED ON  - THE NEW REPUBLICAN POLICY

Trump never purported to be a fiscal conservative. He was given honorary social conservative status by the Evangelicals because he promised to appoint Judges that would reverse Roe versus Wade. Trump was an unashamed populist. He became the people’s candidate against the establishment. He claimed that as a self made fat cat he could understand the worker whose jobs had been outsourced by the wicked capitalists and the miner whose mines had been shut by the namby-pamby politically correct who thought that animals and trees were more important than people’s livelihood. He would protect their social security and give them better and more affordable health care. Besides opening the mines and raping the environment, he would embark on massive infrastructure programs to give them better paying employment. He would bring back all the jobs, at higher paying wages, that had been exported tra la la.

Then he added a racist, nativist and xenophobic dimension to it all. He would chuck out and keep out all “the other” and challenge the concept of America’s melting pot of peoples. By so doing he would make America Great Again, (code for white). The message resonated amongst those who perceived the identity of the real white American was being swallowed up. Trump went directly against Party policy by alienating the Latinos by heaping abuse on them and repeatedly promising to build a wall to keep them out. He would exclude entrance to the Muslims on the pretext of keeping the country safe. This went well with the fringes and mobilized them. It horrified the Republican Establishment that were revolted but at the end of the day did nothing about it, with the excuse that this demagogue was better than Hillary. 

So in effect the new Republican policy agenda included populism and racism. (Trump had carefully established his racist credentials for years previously with the insulting and degrading birther movement that claimed that Obama was not a true American and not entitled to be President). 

WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY POLICY REALLY IS NOW

It didn’t take long for Trump to abandon his populist principles, including no support of social security and affordable health care, which policies were basically the reason he was elected by swinging seventy thousand voters in the American rustbelt to abandon the Democratic Party. Not included in the Tax Reform is money for all those infrastructure projects nor for the wall which was a center piece of his immigration policy.

Trump has generally applied his mind, such as it is, to undermining the very Government he heads and creating an oligarchy. He has worked hard at wrecking the infrastructure of the Federal Government by appointing Heads of Departments whose stated objectives are to sabotage their workings. Whether it be the EPA, whose Chairman is a former Attorney General that regularly sued the Environmental Agency in court or the Education Department whose leader is a life long opponent of public schools the overriding objective is the same - screw the little man and the environment. Ben Carson, who when offered the portfolio of Housing and Urban Development responded that he knew nothing about it, not appreciating that was the crucial credential for the position. The State Department has been denuded and the ineptitude of the Trump Administration’s Foreign Policy is proof of that. And so it goes. 

Trump has also strayed from traditional GOP principles in that he pointedly disagrees with the Separation of Powers as enshrined in the Constitution. In fact he has claimed that he cannot commit any crime as he is the President! He has illustrated his authoritarian approach again and again in response to the fact that he and his campaign are being investigated for collusion with an adversary Russia in the Presidential election. 

Where Trump and the elected Representatives are idem are on providing the Republican donors, Trump himself, and the corporations a massive tax break with the lame argument that it will increase growth so much that the populist agenda will miraculously happen.

So we are now left with a Republican Party whose core constituency is a few oligarchs with their think tanks and Political Action Committees, and of course up to time of going into print, the evangelicals and the lunatic right. The majority of their elected representatives have one further agenda item besides taxes - self preservation. As for policy there really is none other than trickle down economics in the hope that it may well work this time if the money is concentrated in fewer hands.

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT.

It ain’t over till Billy Joel sings “Piano Man”. So before the GOP legislators call it quits what is their response to Trump’s claim that he is above the law? What are they going to do when Mueller dumps the whole sorry mess in their laps? (Already in the public domain there is an unanswerable case of obstruction of justice and collusion with Russia). How will they respond if Trump ends the investigation? Will they defund the Mueller probe and help Trump’s coup d’etat of the country now that he has succeeded with the GOP? Watch this space and pray. Don’t hold your breath because thus far the guardians of the second branch of government have caved in nearly every time.

America is about to face a constitutional crisis but be reassured the “Tax Reform” is halfway there and the stock market is booming. 

Whichever way you look at it, the Republican Party is no longer.