Whatever happened to the party of Lincoln? | Guest Opinion

Now that the dust has settled from a contentious election year, I offer a eulogy. Not so much for 2020, but for the Republican Party that helped make it a bad year. Voters repudiated Donald Trump, but showed us in down-ballot races that conservatism is still strong. Whether the party can recover from Trumpism will depend on the lessons learned.

First, let me make it clear that I’m not some radical leftist. I wore an “I Like Ike” button to school, and as a young adult I was a disciple of Milton Friedman and Barry Goldwater. My first vote was for Barry Goldwater after reading his book, “The Conscience of a Conservative.”

Trump, we learned, is seemly without a conscience. As other party leaders continued to make excuses for his dishonesty and corruption, I inched further and further from the loyalties I once had. Today I would have to say I’m an independent voter who hopes the two-party system can survive.

William F. Buckley famously said he would rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the phone book than by the Harvard faculty. While presidents Nixon, Reagan and the two Bushes exploited that populist view when campaigning, they turned to more experienced and intellectual advisors when making policy decisions.

Unlike those presidents, Trump relies on his own instincts and his professed “genius,” and has valued loyalty over competence. Politicians who had earlier called him “race-baiting,” “xenophobic,” “profane,” “uninformed,” “unhinged” and “unfit” fell in line to do his bidding. They even helped him turn a pandemic into a partisan issue.

We choose our presidents for the wrong reasons. Believing Trump was successful in business, voters thought he was the best choice for the economy. But no president has much influence over economic cycles. On the other hand, a president’s authority to conduct foreign policy is nearly absolute, but receives almost no attention from voters.

The result of this misalignment of priorities was a president who alienated our allies, cozied up to ruthless dictators, pulled out of hard-fought agreements and damaged our reputation around the world. And it’s not as if we didn’t know in 2016 that he was a compulsive decision-maker who had no foreign-policy expertise and had conflicts of interest around the world.

The party needs to distance itself from Christian conservatives who have come to dominate the party and have tolerated Trump’s moral deficiencies. Many one-issue voters hoped he would end abortion or gay marriage. Now they need to decide whether those are their most important issues, because they’re unlikely to change.

The party must abandon its irrational fear of government programs they consider to be socialist. The word “socialism” does not describe the philosophy of Joe Biden, and it does not pose a threat to our country’s capitalist economic system.

Republicans will also need to get over their knee-jerk opposition to taxes. Donald Trump promised to balance the budget “quickly” and erase the national debt, but he squandered the opportunity to advance those goals during a period of prosperity. His tax cuts were not needed for stimulus and they added another trillion dollars to the national debt.

Another of Trump’s touted “achievements” was regulatory reform. But he presided over wholesale slashing of regulations rather than actual reform, weakening protections for workers and the environment and rewarding polluters.

Traditionally, the conservative agenda advocated for free trade, fiscal responsibility, the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, freedom of the press, peace with preparedness, strong alliances and church-state separation. Conservatism used to mean preserving institutions, not tearing them apart as Donald Trump has done.

To return to a non-Trumpian agenda, the party should listen to some of the smart Republicans who were turned off by Trump. I include prominent conservatives George Will, Bill Kristol, Michael Steele, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Colin Powell, Stuart Stevens, Peggy Noonan, John Warner, George Pataki and many others who endorsed Joe Biden.

Can the Republicans win me back? Probably not. I’m 80 years old, and I don’t believe the party can reform itself in my lifetime. I won’t likely be returning.

This story was originally published December 7, 2020 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Whatever happened to the party of Lincoln? | Guest Opinion."