Trump and his MAGA crowds have dragged the once-reputable GOP into a cesspool of lying, corruption, immorality, racism, bigotry, and political violence. That’s more than reason enough to ring the fire bells, but it also isn’t conservatism.
Christian Schneider probably speaks for many traditional conservatives when he writes (here) that they need Trump to lose. He’s not endorsing Harris; he doesn’t like her or her policies. He’s endorsing Trump’s defeat so the Republican Party can be restored to its conservative traditions. He says,
“Of course Harris can’t keep the price of food and clothing down by setting up a ridiculous ‘price gouging’ law (and if she could, why hasn’t the Biden/Harris administration done so yet?). Obviously giving $25,000 to first-time homebuyers would increase demand and drive up housing prices. And taxing unrealized gains would be economically catastrophic, bureaucratically unworkable and almost certainly unconstitutional.”
Do you get a feeling he hasn’t turned into a Harris fan or Democratic supporter? No, his problem is with his own party:
“But it’s not like Republicans have spent the past nine years defending the bedrock principles of free-market conservatism. … [Trump] would continue to insist tariffs are paid by other countries, when in fact economists are nearly unanimous in their belief those costs are borne by American consumers. Trump would continue to fumble the abortion issue …. Further, if Trump were to win, the right would have permanently ceded any moral ground to the left.”
You’ve heard the expression, “I didn’t leave the party, my party left me?” Schneider didn’t explicitly say it, but it’s what he means when he says,
“Over the past four decades, the GOP’s defense of morality, family values and patriotism was the sinew that held the party together. These were fundamental ties that held together religious conservatives, libertarian-leaning Americans worried about taxes and the economy and national defense hawks. But Trump believes in none of these things.”
Everything Schneider writes is true. The Republican Party, as we knew it, no longer exists. Something grotesque took its place. It’s like a gross mold taking over an ice cream shop. He thinks Harris is “a standard, run-of-the-mill Democrat with bad ideas,” but against that backdrop, he wants her to win so the GOP can “once again become a healthy political party.”
The problem isn’t only Trump, but also that his movement has populated down-ballot races with fringe candidates, who either lose or are embarrassingly bad office-holders.
Here is something Democrats and normal Republicans can agree on: America needs two functioning parties and healthy political competition. Liberals should want conservatives to rescue the GOP from the grip of Trump and his lunatic followers. Democrats, of course, will welcome disaffected Republicans’ votes in a joint bid to defeat Trump, hopefully this time for good. If they then go back to voting for normal conservatives, that’s fine, too.