OPINION:
The “Never Trump” contingent in the Republican Party loves to meow the penetrating insight that President Trump wasn’t always a Republican and — psst … isn’t really a conservative.
On hearing this screeched divulgence, the rest of the GOP quietly whispers to itself, “How would Never Trumpers know a Republican, let alone a conservative, if they saw one?”
Ronald Reagan, the saint of modern conservatism, had eight years of smashing success in slowing the growth of taxes, spending and the size of government. Every GOP office-seeker since then has run as a “conservative,” in some cases bothering to look up the word and in other cases not.
One telltale sign that Mr. Trump may have conservative GOP thoughts streaming across his frontal lobe is his oft-tweeted conviction that too many GOP lawmakers lack legislative oompf or any philosophical convictions at all, let alone the courage thereof.
“So far Senate Republicans have not done their job in ending the Obamacare nightmare,” Mr. Trump tweeted last month.
But the resolve of some GOP legislators to put principles ahead of their polling-booth phobia just wasn’t there. So the president again let his fingers do the talking about Senate Republicans.
“They look like fools and are just wasting time,” he tweet-zapped them.
No doubt he, like me, was awed by Senate Republicans’ willingness to reveal how little value they are to their constituents, their party and our president.
It jerks the mind back to what the late humorist M. Stanton Evans observed long before the current cringing crop of legislative cripples came into office (Stan may have actually labeled them thus had he been given to craven petty consonance … which he wasn’t).
“We have two parties here, and only two,” Mr. Evans declared. “One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. I’m very proud to be a member of the stupid party.”
“Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid,” he said. “That’s called bipartisanship.”
Thank you, Stan, wherever you are, for those timeless words about a party that, like a bottle of once-fine wine left uncorked, grows more disappointing with the passage of time.
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