George Packer, Staff Writer for The Atlantic, wrote an excellent, article examining the historical “modern” roots of today’s GOP, which was published yesterday, December 14, 2018, in an article entitled “The Corruption of the Republican Party.”
The article’s subtitle states that “The GOP is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start.”
To be certain, when he cited corruption, he acknowledged that he didn’t mean to refer to “the kind of corruption that regularly sends lowlifes like Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic former governor of Illinois, to prison,” specifically noting that “those abuses are nonpartisan and always with us,” and excluded another kind of corruption such as “vote theft of the kind we’ve just seen in North Carolina – after all, the alleged fraudster employed by the Republican candidate for Congress hired himself out to Democrats in 2010.”
Rather, he states that the particular corruption to which he refers is not based upon one, two, or even three specific examples of types of corruption, but instead “has less to do with individual perfidy than institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them.”
“A consistent repudiation of norms” – that is the very essence of today’s perversion of the modern GOP, as George Packer wrote.
They are no longer a “big tent” party as once described in 1967 by then-California Governor Ronald Reagan to the Republican Assembly on April 1, at the Lafayette Hotel, Long Beach, California, when he said in part that,
“The Republican Party, both in this state and nationally, is a broad party. There is room in our tent for many views; indeed, the divergence of views is one of our strengths. Let no one, however, interpret this to mean compromise of basic philosophy or that we will be all things to all people for political expediency.
“In our tent will be found those who believe that government was created by “We, the People;” that government exists for the convenience of the people and we can give to government no power we do not possess as individuals; that the citizen does not earn to support the government, but supports a government so that he may be free to earn; that, because there can be no freedom without law and order, every act of government must be approved if it makes freedom more secure and disapproved if it offers security instead of freedom.
“Within our tent, there will be many arguments and divisions over approach and method and even those we choose to implement our philosophy. Seldom, if ever, will we raise a cheer signifying unanimous approval of the decisions reached. But if our philosophy is to prevail, we must at least pledge unified support of the ultimate decision. Unity does not require unanimity of thought.”
Warm Southern Breeze 