Matt, It’s Time to Give Up on the Republican Party

Leaving home isn’t easy, but sometimes it’s the only thing to do.

In 2018 and 2019, my Lincoln Project co-founder, Rick Wilson, and I would often find ourselves at the same meeting. Earnest Republicans in hotel conference rooms or grand Washington, DC salons, asking what could be done about then-President Donald Trump.

In those days, most of the attendees believed the Republican Party and Trump were still separate entities; that it was possible to defeat him while retaining or reviving the “Establishment” wing to which most of the congregants belonged.

I have memories of Rick and I shaking our heads and attempting to explain that the GOP and Trump were one, inextricably tied together. That no amount of making Trump look like a ‘loser’ or attempting to beat him on policy would succeed. As I said then, “Calling him an asshole doesn’t work. The people that hate him believe it. The people that love him, love him for it.”

Which is why I read Daily Beast Columnist Matt Lewis’ recent piece with some level of surprise and alarm. In his column, Lewis lays out a personal, thoughtful, poignant, well-researched defense of his conservatism.

Why can’t he leave the Republican Party? “Two words,” Lewis writes, “The Democrats.”

Lewis’ dismantling of the Democratic Party wasn’t a surprise and not particularly novel. He doesn’t like progressives, doesn’t much like government, and disdains liberals’ attempt to create perfect human beings, or perfect unions

His opening argument against Democrats also misses the entirety of the fight in which the country is now engaged. His continuing arguments about the forbears of classic conservativism underscore his unwillingness or inability to see what the Republican Party has become, and is likely to remain.

In extolling Edmund Burke, Lewis writes: “Burke believed western civilization was something of a miracle that had slowly evolved over time. His version of conservatism stressed being grateful and giving thanks for the institutions we have. Tweaking and improving things are commendable, but we shouldn’t stress the system too much. And we certainly shouldn’t attempt to overturn society via revolution.”

Indeed, I share Burke’s view of institutions. Lewis’ inclusion of this passage that confuses me. We can call the modern-day GOP many things, but it is not grateful for our institutions, it is happy to over-stress (or ignore) the system if it suits their needs, and they actively planned and executed an attempt to overturn society via revolution (see January 6, 2021.)

He’s not afraid to rely on tried-and-true tropes – “Grandpa Biden” hands out checks instead of receiving them. Nor is Matt averse to ignoring history that doesn’t suit his argument, i.e., Donald Trump as president handed out checks (with his name on them!) and enough PPP loans to put Ben Bernanke’s helicopters of cash to shame.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin engineered a plot to buy the elections earlier this month by providing up to $400 to every taxpayer or taxpaying family of which there are 2.7 million in the Commonwealth.  Estimating the average check was for about $300, Youngkin’s gambit was an $810 million bribe to voters.

It didn’t work.

On income inequality, Lewis relies on the “rising tide lifts all boats” theory of economics and accuses Democrats of adhering to a zero-sum philosophy that if you have too much, I don’t have enough. According to 2020 exit polls, Trump won voters who made more than $100,000 by 11 points so I’m not sure what Lewis is complaining about.

This discussion of long-dead philosophers feels like a lot of fluff to make his own concrete pillow more comfortable. Again, it misses the key point: The Republican Party is not a conservative organization.

The Republican Party I grew up in, as did Lewis, was predicated on limited government, individual liberty, and a moral and muscular foreign policy. That party, as Lewis well knows, is dead. It is not coming back.

Per their own statements, MAGA front groups plan to ‘dismantle the administrative state.’ We should be clear about what this means: They’re going to get rid of anything they don’t like and helps individual Americans. Trump will probably get rid of the National Hurricane Center because they refused to accept his Sharpie-altered forecast.

Trump being Trump. Courtesy AP

Most of the government we recognize, which yes, could be far more efficient and effective, will be sacrificed on the altar of the so-called ‘power ministries.’ The Department of Justice, the Pentagon, and our intelligence agencies will be weaponized in a second Trump administration. How many times can the man say he’s going to persecute and prosecute his political enemies before we believe him?

Lewis states that core to his conservatism are his pro-life beliefs. He concludes his pre-Dobbs article by saying, “A society who doesn’t care about the least among us is unlikely to truly care about the dignity of the rest.” To me, this is the narrowest definition of ‘the least among us,’ and again convenient to an argument he’s making.

His myopia toward today’s GOP continues. Individual liberty has been core to American conservatism ever since William F. Buckley’s dad bought him a publishing company (boot straps!) Speaker of the House Mike Johnson considers himself 100% pro-life, in all cases. But he also said government should be in the bedrooms of its citizens. Huh? How can a man’s home be his castle if Trump Telescreens^TM occupy every wall?

I was raised by Republican political appointees in Washington, DC during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. We believed, sincerely believed, that Reagan stood between us and the godless Soviet hordes. He stood up to the Russians. Called them ‘the evil empire’ and stood before the Berlin Wall and demanded Gorbachev tear it down. We watched Red Dawn and wished we could be Wolverines.

Wolverines!

How much of this is my own gauzy rearview mirror and how much is reality is beside the point. The United States of America, on its best days, was a beacon of hope and freedom to the entire world. We were the bulwark of democracy,  the core of NATO, and a societal goal other nations strove to match.

Trump and company have shown up who they stand with and have told us what they’ll do if he returns to power. They’re in bed with Vladimir Putin. Trump says he will leave NATO and leave Ukraine to its fate. He is in hock (to the tune of $2 billion) to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman. In short: Today’s Republican Party is so isolationist Charles Lindbergh would get back into the Spirit of St. Louis and fly away.

So where exactly is all this conservatism Lewis is talking about? I see authoritarianism. I see reactionaries. I see Leninists. I see a group of leaders willing to infringe on every American’s individual right, if it suits their purposes and increases their power. Conservative? No. Transactional? Yes. Nihilist? Absolutely.

In America, for now anyway, Lewis and all other Americans have political agency. No one is required to belong to a political party. In fact, more Americans than ever are either changing their registrations to ‘independent’ or never signing up with a party when they turn 18.

If Lewis truly cared about conservative values, he’d leave the Republican Party. His willingness to accept all that’s happened, and how the GOP has metastasized through the body politic provides desperately needed legitimacy for a group of gangsters interested only in power, money, and their own aggrandizement. Why would a ‘true conservative’ want to rep these people?

Matt Lewis does not have to be a Republican simply because he doesn’t like the Democrats. I left the GOP in 2016 when it was clear that Donald Trump would be the nominee. I did not join the Democratic Party for one simple reason: I’m not a Democrat. I’m not going to be a Democrat. I’m an independent, and I’m fine with that.

However, I fight alongside Democrats, liberal, progressives, independents, Republicans, and conservatives who believe in the rule of law, decency, and American democracy. If Lewis wants his party back, instead of contorting himself to find ways to justify his elephant pin, he’d lock arms with us.

There’s only one way to get a sane, pro-democracy, center-right party back in this country: Ensuring that Donald Trump and his chosen candidates don’t just lose next fall but are electorally crushed from coast to coast and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Until and unless Americans reject and repudiate Trumpism, the GOP will continue its rapid descent into madness. For all the Matts out there, it may not be comfortable, but it’s time to make a choice.