On U2’s Rattle and Hum live album, just before the band plays “Helter Skelter,” Bono says something memorable: “This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back.”
Maybe someday we can say the same thing about Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
I may be one of the few people who is holding out hope for repossession. Over the last 20 years, I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about controversial hot-button subjects, ranging from immigration to abortion. However, none of those columns have aroused as much incredulity as my recent one about why I still consider myself a conservative Republican.
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Most of the missives I received were thoughtful and sincere. In one email exchange, a “political orphan” named Randy said, “Your article gave me hope. I appreciate that.” Another reader named Ron found the column “interesting,” adding, “However, I think your basic premise of not wanting to leave the Republican Party misses one essential point. The party has left you.”
While this may be true, membership in the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan does not denote tacit support of Trump or his policies. Few can grasp this point.
Some people say that you should never publicly criticize your team or political home. I obviously disagree. But as is the case with family, I don’t think we should be quick to abandon our past attachments or entirely give up on them.
It’s also worth asking whether the GOP is irredeemably lost. Just 20 years ago, the Republican zeitgeist was about “compassionate conservatism” and “spreading democracy.” Times change, and pendulums swing back and forth (at least, we can hope they do).
As you might imagine, several readers—even those sympathetic to my center-right politics—preferred the Democratic Party because good ol’ Joe Biden (not some crazy progressive) is the presumptive nominee.
“If I had to choose between living under the woke left—that’s the intersectionality crowd—or the MAGA right, I’d have to think hard about it. But that’s not the choice right now,” wrote Ken, who continued: “It’s pretty hard to justify the stolen election lie, and the Jan. 6 insurrection from a Burkean point of view. Who are the French revolutionaries in this picture?”
Ken, like many readers, cited my invocation of British parliamentarian Edmund Burke, whom I contrasted with Thomas Paine, as ironic. Burke was a reformer who believed the institutions of western civilization were a tenuous miracle that must slowly evolve over time, while Paine wanted to topple the establishment and “begin the world over again.” No doubt, some also found my mentioning 18th-century philosophers to be esoteric or pretentious for a 750-word political column (as Crash Davis tells Annie Savoy in the movie Bull Durham, it may have seemed “a little excessive for the Carolina League”).
I mentioned Burke to demonstrate that our two political worldviews (left and right) come with deep-seated assumptions about human nature. And while Trump-era Republicans sadly have deviated from Burke’s philosophy, thus creating a vacuum where conservatism once resided, many on the left (look no further than today’s college campuses) have not deviated from its radical, un-Burkean worldview.
America needs at least one political party to serve as a check on this more radical left-wing ideology. All the more reason for people like me to continue fighting for the GOP to return to its conservative roots.
For some reason, though, many people seem to think that identifying as a Republican means they must endorse Trump. Clearly, I don’t subscribe to this worldview. Just being at a party doesn’t mean you have to drink the Kool-Aid in the punchbowl, as tempting as that might be.
Indeed, I have never voted for Trump. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if a conservative Republican decided that, out of prudence, he or she should vote for Biden over Trump in 2024, I would not find that an unreasonable or traitorous position. There’s nothing stopping a self-identified conservative Republican from doing this very thing.
A vote for Biden could be justified on the grounds that Trump is an existential threat. Likewise, a vote for Biden could even be justified as a necessary step in destroying and then rebuilding a sane and decent Republican Party.
Conservatives who make the prudential decision to vote for Biden, however, should view it as a temporary alliance with the Democrats. That’s because Biden is likely the last vestige of moderation in the Democratic Party, at least for the foreseeable future.
Of course, it’s possible that Biden’s successor will be a moderate.
Personally, I think it is probably more likely that Nikki Haley could defeat Trump—or that the party could someday rebound.
Barring that, at some point, a viable new political party might emerge as a new home for people like me.
That day has not yet arrived. So like the old timers who opt to stay home and ride out yet another storm, the prospect of heading for a temporary shelter is not terribly appealing.
Besides, shouldn’t someone be home if and when the storm subsides?
