Unlike the authors in search of a “Gen Z GOP,” this former high school Goldwater Republican is old enough to remember Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy, Ronald Reagan’s 1980 dog-whistles, George H. W. Bush’s 1988 campaign ads, Newt Gingrich and his acolytes’ decades-long demonization of opponents, and Grover Norquist’s quest to drown government in a bathtub. In that context, Donald Trump is not an aberration within a party of “sound principles,” as the authors hope. He is the apotheosis of a party that long ago “sacrificed its values” while “embracing the tribalism that confuses political opponents with personal foes.”
What is to be gained by fighting within a Republican Party that has sold its soul? As much as I respect the authors’ desire to reform the GOP, I fear that those who obtain power or profit from the party’s devolution will subvert their idealism. Those who gain from GOP power will use these authors’ principles as they used the ideas of today’s Never-Trump Republicans before 2016: as intellectual cover for making divisive strategies less obvious while maintaining policies that these authors so rightly decry.
Ed Mroz
Brookline
Note from KBJ: Donald Trump has little in common with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, or the others listed. Donald Trump is a populist, which means "man of the people." His aim is to do what's best for the working people of this country, not for the corporate elites who happen to reside in the United States but who see themselves as part of a global community. Ed Mroz doesn't understand this, probably because he watches CNN and reads the Boston Globe. I have yet to find a leftist who understands Donald Trump.
