In Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, perhaps the greatest American novel ever published, legendary Texas Rangers Gus Mccrae and Woodrow Call are forced to hang their former colleague Jake Spoon after catching him riding with an outfit of horse rustlers and man burners. Young Newt Dobbs, who aides in bringing Jake to justice, but can’t believe his hero would do such a thing, declares to Gus afterward “Jake weren’t no killer!” Gus, as close to a father as Newt has known, explains wisely that Jake had no bearings and “any breeze could blow him.” Today our nation is addled by a Republican Party consisting in the main of Jake Spoons, moorless waifs of limited character and even less concern for the nation’s welfare.
Just how morally aimless and without honor this group truly is seems about to be put to the test, as the wretched bully who has browbeat them the last couple of years heads toward his own reckoning. That he will make support of his corruption and general malfeasance a litmus test for what constitutes a GOP member in good standing is a sure bet; Trump’s itchy Twitter finger stands ready to isolate and denounce any who stray from his cause. Tuesday’s “meeting” with Pelosi and Schumer signaled a new challenge Trump demonstrated clearly he is not interested in meeting… negotiating with the opposition.
To be fair the President may do a better job meeting halfway on anything if he actually believed it was in his political and personal interest to do so. And that appears far from the case. To Trump’s eyes owning a government shutdown carries no risk at all because it is wildly popular with his wretched core and Fox/AM. Hannity, Dobbs, Ingraham et al have been beating the drums with glee over the prospect for months now, likening it to a Churchillian moment of leadership. Does the GOP rank and file in the House and Senate feel the same way? Are they ready to bet their political future on Trump’s wretched core, take the 32 % for a test drive and see what she can do? Do they even have a choice anymore? Besides, last month’s elections washed most who walked the wire between reason and visceral grievance out to sea. The House GOP is now near completely a back bencher caucus, uninterested in much more than getting booked for rants on the Fox/AM circuit, strutting its pro- gun and anti-abortion bona fides, and getting a sip or two from the seemingly endless shit river donor trough. This is not a party exhibiting much concern for its future prospects which, in between the mortality of its most devoted and established trends in US heterogeneity, seem bleak. Nothing grand about this old party, more a terminally ill patient on life support.
The last major American political party to dissolve was the Whigs, who failed to withstand the chasm created by the issue of slavery in emerging western US territories. With the election of Abraham Lincoln the Republicans replaced the Whigs, providing the political platform to oppose secession and teaming locally with remaining Whig elements after the Civil War to pursue Reconstruction. Were today’s GOP to fail under the weight of its missteps trying to tip toe for advantage around the bigotry and nihilism of the Tea Party bloc that morphed effortlessly into Trump’s wretched core, turning the “big tent” into “white Christian only,” it’s difficult to imagine what will replace it.
The constant refrain that the Democrats are hostage to extreme elements of their own just doesn’t hold water; neither Pelosi or Schumer smack at all of unbridled progressivism. The ease with which the seasoned Pelosi brought to heel dozens of new insurgents, who had made replacing her topic A of their primary campaigns, underscores that, at least in one of our major political parties, there is still recognition of the necessary differences between getting elected and governing. Call it selling out if you wish, but Trump reminds us hourly where “promises made, promises kept” gets us. New blood has been infused, and their agenda will surely be heard in 2020. For now national survival is paramount.
No, it appears any new iteration arising from the ashes of the post-Trumpian GOP will be mostly the refugees displaced by the disaster he both represented and accelerated. But do the RINOs have either the resources or vitality to create an alternative to the white nationalist monstrosity they either abandoned or were unable to maintain viability within? More importantly, are any of them really that far removed from the GOP mainstays now in charge? What do they have to offer that is so fundamentally different from current party platforms?
Climate change acceptance? Not really, the party had lurched toward skepticism of scientific consensus well before Trump came on the scene, as fossil fuel interests railed about carbon neutral and their bottom line. Immigration? GOP hardliners have been fouling up the works on comprehensive reform since Reagan. “Amnesty” has been a dirty word on the right side of the aisle for 40 years now, non-European refugees the scapegoats for longer. Only the overt bigotry of Trump’s rhetoric and obsession with an idiotic wall as panacea distinguish him from a long line of predecessors. Civil Rights and diversity? While it’s hard to go anywhere but up from this Administration’s ugliness on the matter, note the GOP was home to Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms before Jeff Sessions and Tom Cotton. John McCain himself had trouble supporting an MLK holiday. Supply Side follies? Emerging doctrine since Reagan. Supporting Repressive Arab regimes? Please. Abortion? Pro-Choice Republicans were a critically endangered species in the 90s.
The more one examines the GOP past and present, the more one appreciates what we see now is simply what it appears to be… the grotesque inadequacy of the President they fielded, and his apologists, taints the agenda most all never had a problem supporting. In other words, there no longer exists the possibility of creating a “moderate conservative” brand. It’s all about style rather than substance. What they left, they helped create. Louie Gohmert simply leaves less to the imagination and rants more. The song remains the same.
Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham are currently in contortions explaining how Michael Cohen is a whole nother body from Donald Trump; anything he did was his own doing. Oh, and even if the President did order everything, it’s merely a civil matter, “weaponizing” the otherwise innocuous “personal’ transaction as a felony only reinforces what a destructive enterprise Mueller’s fishing expedition has become. Black is white, night is day. The flailing spasms of a narrative cornered with nowhere to go. Expect more of the same on the collusion pieces, and obstruction, and money laundering. Inane explanation followed by illogical rationalization… the death throes of a party in decline. With nothing to replace it… just more hot air to blow its fleet of Jake Spoons in the preferred direction.
Yet and still, anybody listening to Freedom Caucus members act nasty to stem cell researchers in committee hearings understands, had John Kasich trumped Trump back in the spring of 16’ and eaten HRC’s lunch in November, his GOP would have been doing most of the same things this one is doing, less the defending an unhinged narcissist thing. The winds blowing them would surely have been less severe, but they would have headed in that general direction just the same, with similar intentions.
In other words, this really still is your father’s GOP. And to those just now exclaiming enough is enough, it’s useful to recall what Gus told Jake as his old associate pleaded he had nothing to do with rustling and killing, but merely “fell in with those boys to make it through the territory without getting scalped.” “Sorry Jake,” Gus replies, “but any man go along with six killings is making his escape a little slow.” BC
