(Cartoon image is by Monte Wolverton at cagle.com.)The following is just part of an op-ed in The Guardian by Charlie Sykes. Mr. Sykes is a conservative Republican who is very upset over his party's abandoning it's conservative principles to accept Trumpism.
As Donald Trump extends his control over the Republican party, American conservatism has entered a pseudo-Orwellian stage where weakness is strength, appeasement is toughness, lies are truth, and “America first” means “blame America first”.
The fiasco in Helsinki, where the president openly sided with Vladimir Putin over his own country’s intelligence agencies, was not a one-off for this president but rather an exclamation point on what has happened to the American right.
For me, as an outspoken conservative for the last four decades, the experience has been vertiginous. On one issue after another – from Russia and free trade to corruption and the rule of law – Republicans have adjusted their principles to conform with Trumpism, which often means with Trump’s latest glandular impulse. . . .
Many Republicans have rationalized their support for Trump by pointing to tax cuts, rollbacks in regulation and Trump’s appointments of conservative judges. But last week reminded us how many of their values they have been willing to surrender. Moral relativism and its cousin, moral equivalency, are not bugs of the Trump presidency; they are central to its diplomatic philosophy. Unfortunately, polls suggest that many conservatives are OK with that, despite the betrayal of what were once deeply held beliefs. . . .
The problem is that many conservatives have confused the swagger of the schoolyard bully with actual strength; we saw how Trump behaves when he’s confronted by an even bigger bully. He groveled, and then hedged, then tried to walk it all back with the absurdly laughable claim that he confused the word “would” for “wouldn’t”. Depressingly, that was good enough for some Republicans, including the Ohio senator Rob Portman, who said he was willing to take Trump at his word.
But we’ve seen this movie before, as Republicans react to Trump’s outrages by wringing their hands, only to fall back into line.
Understandably, this feeds the impression that we should regard Trumpism as a logical and organic outgrowth of conservatism rather than an existential threat to that tradition. That is, of course, the view from the (Sean) Hannitized right, which insists that opposition to Trump among so-called Never Trumpers is a form of apostasy. . . .
The real danger, however, in seeing Trump as the logical, organic product of conservatism is that it normalizes him. Discounting the peculiarity of his rise ignores the uniqueness of the danger he poses and the urgent need to confront the damage he is doing to the body politic and our political culture. If he is merely another Republican, there no cause for more than the usual alarm.
But last week reminded us that there is nothing normal about Donald Trump or the existential threat he represents. It is long past time for conservatives and Republicans to recognize that.
