GOP battles show a party heading deeper into fever swamps

SACRAMENTO — The Republican Party that I joined in the 1980s (and later left) espoused a straightforward set of principles. It believed in free markets, limited government, peace through strength in dealing with international aggressors, and “traditional” values. Sure, the last one was nebulous and the party often was hypocritical, but these core ideas were the key to its eventual resurgence.

One of its leading lights, former NFL quarterback Jack Kemp, was described by The New York Times as someone who “brought more zeal to America’s poverty problems than any national politician since Robert Kennedy … the only official to have won standing ovations in black ghettos by calling for a capital gains tax cut.” Kemp, like Ronald Reagan, exuded authenticity. Despite their flaws, these serious big-hearted men truly believed in classic American ideals.

In his farewell address, President Reagan, often called the Great Communicator, was characteristically humble: “I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation.” Conservatives in the media were mostly about exploring weighty ideas, as any perusal of William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Firing Line” archive reveals.

Engaging in nostalgia is a hazard of growing older, but one need not be misty-eyed to compare that Grand Old Party to the current freak show. Sure, Democrats were pretty awful during that era (and embraced views surprisingly common in Republican circles today) and largely remain so, but the GOP was the voice of sanity. With the GOP’s dark and nasty pivot, advocates for those age-old ideals have nowhere to turn.

We’ve become numb to narcissistic rage posts from our president, but the highly publicized Turning Point USA convention last week offers a preview into where the Republican Party is going after Donald Trump exits the stage. It’s not pretty. As we’ve seen recently in other squabbles within the conservative movement, the fireworks centered on the rhetoric of some conspiracy minded — but highly popular — right-wing personalities. TPUSA had it all: in-fighting, name-calling and innuendo.

In the old days, the conservative movement tried to police itself, as it shoved authoritarians and conspiracy theorists to the sidelines. Buckley took on the John Birch Society, which in its zealous anti-communism argued the United States government was controlled by communists. Standing up to the Evil Empire was a core part of conservative philosophy, but Buckley realized that allowing the fever swamps to engulf his movement only tarnished that goal.

Some critics argue Buckley wasn’t all that successful, but he was successful enough to keep the party from becoming what it has become now — where reasonable voices are drowned out by the likes of Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. If there are no adults in charge — and the party’s leader acts like a toddler, as he savages his foes in petty tantrums, renames buildings after himself and adds insulting White House plaques below the portraits of former presidents — then the whole trashy movement will one day be heaved into the dumpster.

Those recent controversies, however, show the movement’s problem isn’t solely the result of a body rotting from the head down. At the TPUSA event, the main fireworks were between commentators Ben Shapiro and Carlson over the latter’s puff interview with far-right “Groyper” Fuentes. Shapiro said the slain leader of TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, “knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll, and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility, and that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did.” Carlson tried to make it a free speech issue, with Vice President J.D. Vance siding with a big Republican tent that won’t de-platform its fringe voices.

Sadly, Shapiro and the relatively traditional Republicans seem to be walking the plank. A recent public-opinion survey from the conservative Manhattan Institute found 37% of Republicans believe the Holocaust was exaggerated or didn’t happen as historians describe it and 41% believe the 9-11 attacks were “likely orchestrated or permitted by the U.S. government.” Meanwhile, the party has mostly abandoned those Reagan-era views, as the administration chooses tariffs over markets, promotes an unrestrained federal government, blames Ukraine for its invasion and embraces a brooding, pessimistic vision.

Now many Republicans support the concept of a Heritage American, where those with ancestry closer to the founding are more American than later arrivals. It’s a natural outgrowth of the GOP’s new values. “Nationalism doesn’t just historically correlate with bigotry — it consistently drives antisemitism and other racial and ethnic prejudices,” wrote law professor Ilya Somin in the Unpopulist. That’s because it replaces the “universalist liberal principles of the American Founding” with its “zero-sum worldview … under which one ethnic or racial group can only gain at the expense of others.”

There’s no returning to the past, but perhaps in the post-Trump scuffle some GOP leaders will emerge who rediscover the basics of our founding. As Reagan said, “the eyes of mankind are on us.”

Steven Greenhut is a member of the Southern California News Group Editorial Board. Write to him at stevengreenhut@gmail.com.