No longer able to withstand the weight of leftist ideology that has been institutionalized at all levels, ordinary Americans can no longer ignore the consequences of what they once tolerated in the belief that – even in times of extreme turbulence – the center would hold.
Margot Cleveland (The Federalist)
Former speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) is fed up with eight GOP crazies who removed Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House: “They’re traitors. What they did was to go to the other team to cause total chaos. All eight of them should be primaried (and) driven out of public life.”
Conservatism and chaos don’t mix. Those eight Republicans were elected to stop the chaos created by an Obama-Biden scheme to remake American politics and culture; so, if it feels like the GOP is at a crossroads, that’s because it is.
Conservatives appreciate the unreliability of human judgment, and elect Republicans as a check upon Democrat social experiments that aren’t grounded in everyday life. Gingrich rightly says the GOP “ought to be focusing on” Biden, whose re-election will consolidate full control of the bureaucracy, courts, and Congress.
That’s four more years to cancel the past and the inherited, and ensure America collapses under the cost and disruption of a Green New Deal (that is doomed to fail).
If only Reagan-Bush Republicans had been able to stop the leftward lurch of the governing class, but a few tax cuts and conservative justices were no match for Democrats willing to “transform America” by hook or crook. MAGA populism is the natural reaction to WOKE globalism, which is betting the US economy on a climate theory.
If the center does not hold – and it has not – Antifa’s 2016 multi-city riots and MAGA’s 2021 Capitol riot become the norm. Republicans are at a crossroads.
The Manhattan Institute’s James Piereson believes the MAGA voter saw two GOP paths after the 2020 election. They could accept diluted votes, more censorship, an all-powerful central state, and “woke” culture. Or, they could fight for the “first principles” of Republicanism; governments holding authority only by the consent of the governed, rights that come from God and preexist government, and federal authority restricted by the Constitution.
The Capitol riots were a long time coming. New Criterion’s Roger Kimball notes that limited constitutional government forever allowed Americans to “care for their families, maintain their communities, and follow their faith.” But, after FDR and LBJ super-sized the administrative state, “blurring the lines between public and private” became inevitable.
To be sure, the Reagan trinity of Christian cultural hegemony, fear of socialism, and patriotism slowed the far-left’s roll, but it was short lived. The American Conservative’s Daniel McCarthy writes that Reagan and Bush One were supported by American corporations, but Fortune 500 leaders now behave as if “economic nationalism and Christian morality are a greater nuisance” than socialism (look at Target’s sourcing and Disney’s programming). That’s how bad it is.
Clinton professed fidelity to capitalism but helped China into the WTO, creating hollowed-out factory towns and Forgotten Americans. Obama professed fidelity to the Constitution but consolidated federal authority by executive order, creating less law-and-order and Identity Politics. This begat Trump and a GOP Congress, who rightly opposed the policies of the Clinton-Obama-Biden cartel. There was hope, right?
Horrible things happened on the way to reversing Obama’s damage. A partisan and weaponized administrative state undermined President Trump; thereby creating RINOs. An election-losing Trump refused the legitimacy of America’s elections; thereby alienating independents. The “crazy Trump” leaks and Trump’s “big lie” shattered the center, which is why the GOP has underperformed in three straight national elections.
The Hoover Institution’s Victor Davis Hanson asks how Democrats can be wrong on illegal immigration, energy independence, education, and parental rights – and keep winning elections? It could be news reports of crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene and skanky Lauren Boebert, but it’s probably Trump and better Democrat electioneering. So, don’t fault the church goers and cash-strapped parents in the MAGA gear.
After years of having to compete for entry-level jobs against illegal immigrants, work where identity trumps ability, live one degree of separation from fentanyl deaths and gang violence, send kids to schools that teach boys can be girls, or live in towns where crazies defund police departments and topple statues, MAGA voters are tired of turning the other cheek to Hillary Clinton’s insults. These are dark days for ordinary Americans. They need a hero.
The only way out of the GOP darkness – leftist control of the media, troubled Trump in front, circular firing squad in the House – is for a leader the likes of Churchill or Reagan to grab the torch. If the darkest hour is just before dawn, then it’s time for Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, or Tim Scott to start “walking on the sea” (Matthew 14:25).
