Liberals disagree on when Republicans changed from a mere opposition party into a truly malign force. For obvious reasons, the early 1980s are a popular choice. The Washington Monthly’s Martin Longman thinks it happened later, during Bill Clinton’s second term, but also speculates that the GOP’s “crackpot” period may be almost over.
Donald Trump’s presidential bid, contended Longman in a Friday post, may even spell the end of conservatism as we’ve known it: “If Trump loses, and loses badly, I’m not sure that future Republican presidential candidates will want to emulate him. There might still be a window where a candidate can hope to win by racially polarizing the electorate and getting enough of just the white voters to win. But that window is closing if it is not already closed…If [Trump’s candidacy] is the logical endpoint of the Conservative Movement, well, it seems like we’re reaching the end…That’s my hope, anyway.”
From Longman’s post (bolding added):
Some taboos should not be broken, and the Republicans have been breaking taboos left and right ever since they decided to impeach the president over a petty infidelity, or at least since hanging chads tripped up the 2000 recount in Florida.
…It used to be that we didn’t start wars of choice that involved invading and occupying foreign countries based a tissue box full of lies…
The list is getting pretty long at this point. You don’t threaten the credit of the United States. You don’t shut down the government. You don’t filibuster every procedural move in the Senate. You don’t refuse to meet with a Supreme Court nominee.
And, yes, you don’t nominate someone like Sarah Palin or Donald Trump and then try to tell us that they’re well-qualified for the position. You don’t defend the crackpot things that they say, whether it’s about torturing people, nuking people, beating the shit out of people, or deporting them by the millions.
Once you break these kind of taboos, the standards fall away and we’re no longer a credible defender of human rights and nuclear non-proliferation, or a beacon of freedom and sanctuary from strife…Even our norms against open professions of racism wither on the vine…
If Trump loses, and loses badly, I’m not sure that future Republican presidential candidates will want to emulate him. There might still be a window where a candidate can hope to win by racially polarizing the electorate and getting enough of just the white voters to win. But that window is closing if it is not already closed. If Trump can’t do it in 2016, it will take even more polarization to pull off in 2020. And it’s frankly pretty hard to see how you could be more racially polarizing than Trump and still retain the white voters who are turned off by this kind of politics…
If [Trump’s candidacy] is the logical endpoint of the Conservative Movement, well, it seems like we’re reaching the end.
That’s my hope, anyway.
