I’ve been saying for a few years now that the Republican Party will go the way of the Whigs, and become extinct. I’ve been thinking their end would come about in 2020. But now I believe both of those predictions are wrong and need to be adjusted.
It’s not necessarily the Republican Party itself that will end. And the timing of the event will not be 2020; it will be 2016.
The Republican Party has a chance of surviving. Actual and moderate conservatives can also survive. It’s basically their choice. The entity that will end this year is the Movement Conservative which lies within the Republican Party. (The Tea Party lies within the Movement Conservative.)
Like a cancer, the Movement Conservative infected the GOP in the 1950s. It first made them morph into something different, then it made them stronger for a period. But then it began to devour and kill from the inside. The GOP can surgically remove it before it kills them, or they can go the way of the Whigs.
Donald Trump is becoming the perfect bookend to support the ending.
Just like Trump’s candidacy is proving to be, the beginning of the Movement Conservative was also based on white supremacy. It began as a reaction to the first breaths taken by the civil rights act under the Eisenhower administration in 1957. It strengthened as the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed in the 1960s, when Senator Goldwater lead the few new Republican movement conservatives to vote against those measures. Then they purposely sought to attract the segregationist old-school southern Democrats who had also voted against those bills.
In addition, they fought against women’s rights and pulled in the evangelical Christian movement. They studied how to brainwash people into believing the American government was their enemy, even though they were in charge of the American government. They indoctrinated many poor people into thinking that blacks and other poor people would take their future fortunes away from them.
They made promises to shrink government that they simply could not keep because the people they most successfully brainwashed were the people who most relied on the government to survive. Currently the most conservative states are those which rely on federal government subsidies most. The Movement Conservatives succeeded in convincing many that they were “fiscally conservative” even though they swelled the country’s debt and deficits. And they succeeded in blocking the voting rights of others as much as possible, as well as rigging presidential election results because they knew they could never convince enough Americans of their viability.
The ending of the Movement Conservative was triggered by the election of the first black U.S. president. Trump has been a leader in the bigotry that has opposed President Obama from the beginning. He lead the birther movement when he promised, “My people are in Hawaii now and they will find proof that he was born in Kenya…believe me…BELIEVE me.” They never turned up any proof.
Trump is now supported by the KKK and other white supremacist groups. He wears his racism and bigotry on his sleeve. His followers are the same white supremacists that supported the Movement Conservative and their support only fuels his ego.
Just like William F. Buckley Jr., who was in large part a founding father of the Movement Conservative, Trump is also a white supremacist rich kid who got to spend his whole life playing with his dad’s money, never being vetted even to the degree of having an actual job interview. These two men make perfect bookends on the shelf space entitled “The Movement Conservative – 1957 to 2016”.
I have many conservative friends. They think the government should tighten their account books, be more efficient and less intrusive. There are many areas in which we agree. The reasonable people who consider themselves to be in the party of Lincoln have not realized or understood that they’ve been infected with this Movement Conservative cancer. Like the first sign of intense pain that a cancerous growth inflicts, Trump has made them aware. They can be the person afraid of the truth who avoids the doctor’s appointment, or they can be a pragmatic surviver and rid themselves of the cancer if possible.
Although I must admit I was rooting for the end of the GOP, I was also nervously wondering what force would fill that void. Could it be even worse? Then I realized the GOP was not the problem. Their Movement Conservative cancerous growth was the problem. I hope the GOP survives so that we can restore vigorous and reasonable debate so our politics and our government can run the way it was designed to by its framers.
