Burn it down!

I get two Never Trump aggregations of articles every morning: The Bulwark, from Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes, and others, and The Dispatch, from David French, Jonah Goldberg, and a different bunch of conscientious conservatives. The Dispatch is a paid subscription service, whereas The Bulwark is free.

This week an interesting disagreement came to the fore between French and Sykes. French, a devout evangelical Presbyterian, is a conservative columnist and constitutional lawyer specializing in freedom of religion and freedom of speech cases. He was the one to whom Bill Kristol finally turned when seeking an independent candidate to run against Trump and Clinton in 2016 before Evan McMullin finally agreed to take the plunge.

French argues that while Donald Trump has to be turned out of office in November, traditional conservatives should resist taking a "burn it all down" approach to the Republican Party. After all, he pointed out,  with Joe Biden in the White House and the Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, they will be effectively in control of two of the three branches of government (arguably, the left has controlled the courts for decades, and Gorsuch and Kavanaugh seem not to have made much difference), and conservatives will be left without any effective way to stop them from running wild. Vote Trump out, by all means, French advises us. But don't automatically take your anger out on his enablers. After all, they were under a great deal of pressure during what will hopefully be an aberrant four years in the history of the Party, and it would have taken a great deal of political courage to stand up to Donald Fredovich:

I’m going to go ahead and admit to a sad reality, right up front. I want what the best available polling tells me that I’m highly unlikely to get. I want Donald Trump out of the presidency and the GOP still in control of the Senate. In other words, in the furious argument over the future of the Republican party and political conservatism, consider me squarely in the camp that seeks to dump Trump but not to seek vengeance on the rest of the GOP.

A rage, fury, and a “burn it all down” mentality is one of the maladies that brought us to the present moment. Repeating that same impulse, but with an entire party in the crosshairs, will only compound our political dysfunction.

Besides, it’s not necessary for those who seek to send a message that Donald Trump is an unfit president. And it’s counterproductive for those of us who still believe that the conservative elements of the Republican party provide the best prospects for securing the liberty, prosperity, and security of the American republic.

Moreover, “burn it all down” lacks a quality that’s increasingly essential in American culture and politics. It’s completely devoid of grace. It ignores the monumental pressures that Donald Trump has placed on the entire GOP and the lack of good options that so many GOP officeholders faced. In short, most of them are not the chief offenders or culprits who led the United States to its present national predicament.

Former radio host Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark disagrees:

...We need to have this debate: Is Trumpism a seasonal flu or a metastasizing cancer? Or to mix some metaphors: Does the Republican party need an attitude adjustment or a complete exorcism? Botox or an enema?

In political terms: Can you defeat Trumpism by defeating Trump but leaving his bootlickers in power?

As George Will has said, Trump has been a “Vesuvius of mendacity,” but the rot obviously runs much deeper than the president himself. Trump himself is a horror show, but the most horrific story of the last four years has been the complete surrender of the GOP to Trumpism, not just on policy but on everything. The party that once imagined itself to be about ideas became a cult of personality for one of the most deplorable personalities in political history.

The Democratic Party is bad but not as bad as many on the right try to make it seem. It is not the party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, no matter what the Trumpists may say; it's the party of Barack Obama. That might be bad enough, but the Democratic nominee isn't Bernie Sanders. It's Joe Biden. And Sykes scoffs at the idea that the Republican Party can be restored to its original principles and saved as a viable alternative to the Democrats by defeating Trump but sustaining his enablers:

But in this case, saving the party means voting for Lindsey Graham, Kelly Loeffler, John Cornyn, Martha McSally, Thom Tillis, Mitch McConnell, Cory Gardner, and Joni Ernst.

What kind of salvation is that?

Sykes reaches exactly the opposite conclusion from French:

Of course, we need to be realistic: If Senate Republicans are defeated en masse, they will not necessarily be replaced by angels or statesmen, and the policy implications will not be pleasant for conservatives.

There are, however, no permanent victories or defeats. Parties can renew themselves in the wilderness.

But if the GOP does not somehow renew itself—by purging the foul air of its current corruption—it will find itself in the wilderness for the next 40 years as it tries to explain its history of Vichy Trumpism.

Where does that leave us?

I have nothing but respect for Mitt Romney, and if I lived in Nebraska, I would probably come around to voting for Ben Sasse this year. And throughout the nation, there are smart, principled, competent Republican governors like Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, and Phil Scott.

As for the rest of them: Burn it all down.

Should we take French's advice and vote for "good Republicans?" Or should we take the route Sykes recommends, and "burn it all down," with possible clemency for a handful who have shown any inclination to resist the takeover of the Republican Party by nativism and authoritarianism? The answer, it seems to me, depends precisely on how one answers the question Sykes asks: Is the disease from which the Republican Party suffers merely the flu, or is it cancer?

I'm afraid I have to see things the way Sykes does. Trumpism is no more the flu than COVID-19 is, no matter what The Federalist might claim. Mitt Romney voted to convict Trump in the impeachment trial. He was the only Republican senator to do so. Ben Sasse and a handful of others have at least occasionally done better than Martin Niemoller did when the Nazis came for the Jews and the Catholics and objected.

But are the handful of Republican elected officials who have occasionally refused burn incense to the Orange Emperor anything more than isolated exceptions to the wholesale abandonment of conscience, basic decency, and conservative principles which has fundamentally transformed the party of Lincoln and Reagan into the party of Trump? I wish I could say that they were. But they are not, and that very fact must guide those who want to save the Republican Party. Nothing is going to do that short of a global disaster at the polls this November.  This is not the flu; the GOP no longer has the antibodies to fight off a temporary invasion by the virus of Know-Nothingism. This is cancer. Trumpism has hijacked the very essence of the Republican Party, and it must be eradicated if the patient is going to be saved. The consequences of selling out to Donald Trump must be so drastic and so catastrophic that the remaining islands of Trumpism in the party will be isolated and excluded, and any repetition of the moral cowardice we've seen on the right over the last four years made unthinkable.

I reacted to the French article this way:

I respectfully disagree. Voting to acquit Trump in the face of the evidence against him in the impeachment trial and the obvious falsehood of the arguments put forward in his defense- even, in many cases, announcing which way one would vote before hearing the evidence- was a violation of senators' oath to do impartial justice.

The way Republicans in public office and also some in the media have shamelessly jettisoned their career-long principles to support a psychologically unstable, globally ignorant, morally tone-deaf and clearly incompetent authoritarian with no filters who has consistently sided with his country's enemies against America's allies, interests and values raises serious questions about whether it's even sane to ever trust them again. Character is best revealed precisely when the going gets tough and the consequences for standing up for one's principles are costly, not when it's easy.

The Republican Party- if it survives- will be tainted by its willingness to crawl into bed with the racists and the alt-right for a generation. And just because Trump is gone does not mean that Trumpism will disappear with him. Trust me; it will remain a major factor in the party's makeup.

I made plenty of phone calls for Sen. Joni Ernst here in Iowa six years ago. She has proven unworthy of my considerable regard and confidence by allowing herself to become complicit in the Trump aberration, even to the point of running protectionist ads in her re-election bid. I will be voting for her opponent this time. I believe that any remote chance for the Republican Party to be saved requires that it go down to crushing defeat and every level this November so that the political cost of tolerating the kind of ugly stupidity that has come to define it over the last four years may be clearly seen to be unacceptable to voters and political suicide for those who espouse it. While it will take quite a while for me ever to trust them again, I am perfectly willing to consider supporting Republicans who admit that they were wrong to bend the knee to Trumpism and are willing to repudiate it. But the only hope of saving the Republican Party is a massive political purge of those who are unwilling to do so. That will not happen without a crushing and global defeat in the Fall.

Personally, despite serving twice on the County Republican Central Committee... and serving as a delegate to the State Convention, I changed my registration to "no party" because of the takeover of the party by the far-right, something that was obviously happening even before Donald Trump came along. If Rubio or Fiorina or Bush had been nominated I would have been willing to consider sticking around. I would even have voted for Ted Cruz over Hillary. But after watching the way the Republican Party (as well as many hitherto responsible conservative journalists) have sold their souls to Donald Trump, I simply don't trust them anymore.

Personally, I think a new, center-right third party needs to arise to replace the Republicans. Short of a thorough self-reformation of a nature that I just don't see coming, I'm done with the Republicans. I will continue to vote for individual Republican candidates who are worthy of my support. But short of at the very least an admission that climbing aboard the "Trump Train" was an ethical mistake, having supported the man is henceforth a deal-breaker for me.

Any hope that exists that the GOP can still be saved depends on a prompt, decisive root-and-branch housecleaning. And a mutation as radical and as deadly as Trumpism cannot be reversed without a radical remedy. Nyquil is not an adequate response to cancer.

The Republican Party needs to be remade before it can be trusted with power again. Frankly, I doubt that the transformation from Trumpism will ever be complete enough for me to wholly trust it. But any chance of it happening depends on 2020 being an utter electoral disaster for the GOP from the top of the ticket to the bottom. Beating Trump, even decisively, will not be enough.

There should be amnesty for those willing to recant their apostasy. And there are obvious exceptions, few though they are, who deserve to be retained in office this Fall. But the only way to ensure that a disaster like Donald Trump never happens again is for the craven surrender of traditional Republican and American principles is seen to have consequences that are both ruthless and drastic.

One cannot treat cancer with Botox.

ADDENDUM: Mona Charen- another prominent conservative journalist who has consistently chosen principle over party and is a fixture at The Bulwark- chimes in convincingly on Sykes's side of the argument. 

It's as Sykes, Charen, George Will, Bill Kristol, and the minority of conservative journalists who have chosen to stand for something rather than fall for the notion that "owning the libs" is more important than patriotism and honor have been saying all along. As Charen puts it, "The most demoralizing aspect of the past four years has not been that a boob conman was elected president but that one of the two great political parties surrendered to him utterly."

To vote for the sycophants would be to reward sycophancy and guarantee that the party of Lincoln and Reagan will never stand for anything again. And that is simply to high a price to pay for "owning the libs."