With the Republican Party locked out of power in Washington, there has been a lot of discussion about what will emerge from the ashes. Despite constant sparring among conservatives, liberals are trying to push the idea that there is actually no civil war within the party.
From Mother Jones to CNN, the left-wing commentariat has decided that the party is Donald Trump’s now, and they’re most likely doing so to will a useful lie into existence. After all, if the GOP belongs to the former president for good, then the media no longer has to pretend to aim for impartiality. So what if Sen. Ben Sasse and Rep. Liz Cheney reflect Trump in neither ideology nor morality? Better off to claim they don’t matter because the party is rotten to the core.
But oddly enough, Sen. Bernie Sanders diagnosed the real civil war in the party to a tee. It’s not an ideological question of Trumpian nationalist populism versus “the establishment,” which inexplicably includes Sen. Mitch McConnell, the single most effective executor of Trump’s agenda. It’s one of whether the party will cling to the delusions of the big election lie and conspiracy theories and treat dishonesty and incivility as positive goods, or demand truth as the highest virtue, regardless of the political conclusions that come next.
The Republican Party has a fundamental decision to make. Will it be a conservative party functioning within a democratic society? Or will it be an authoritarian party built upon the Big Lie, conspiracy theories and violence? It cannot be both.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 1, 2021
The GOP can and should be a large ideological tent. No reasonable “establishment” or libertarian conservative is calling for hawkish Sen. Tom Cotton to be expunged from the party. But lying to the people you were elected to serve by claiming that Trump won the election is antithetical to the conservative belief that truth is as vital a virtue as liberty and justice. A party that traffics in conspiracy theories cannot judge and challenge the fallacies of the radical Left, and one that normalizes violence in pursuit of domestic power is, in effect, giving up on the American experiment of the peaceful transfer of power. Though bad faith actors on both sides of the “establishment” and Trumpian populist divide may claim this debate is second to that of ideology and policy, with Trump out of the way, Republicans may finally get to realize that we’ve come to agree on a plethora of issues that are proven electoral winners.
The libertarians, protectionist populists, and nationalists can pretty much agree that the foreign policy realism that brought us the Abraham Accords and tough diplomacy on China can entirely replace the party’s former penchant for eschewing sanctions and economic maneuvering in favor of a binary of either appeasement or troop deployment. The pandemic and wokeism’s invasion of our public school system has elucidated the nation’s urgent need for Republicans to champion school choice and the integrity of a fact-based curriculum as an absolute priority. The party also made monumental gains among Latinos of diverse national origins, including among those living along the southern border, proving that running on a message of strong support for border security and domestic law enforcement is not anathema to minority voters. Republicans don’t have to agree on everything, and on issues internal to states, they shouldn’t expect to. But on foreign policy, education, and law and order, that is, the issues that directly affect most Americans, there is broad consensus within the party.
For all of the supposed division between “national conservatives” and the party’s traditional capitalists, they are really fighting on the margins of taxation and spending. They all fundamentally agree that the market works in a way that Democrats, which now include a literal socialist coalition, do not. Fighting over expanding child tax credits and regulating Big Tech is a debate orders of magnitude less consequential than whether the government should nationalize one-fifth of the economy with “Medicare For All,” let alone the energy industry with a Green New Deal.
The ideological debates within the Right can and should be debated with vigor, both to refine all sides of the argument and, yes, to have one faction win out on various policies. But Republicans cannot possibly do so as long as they let liars, conspiratorial crackpots, and political hustlers willing to leverage violence and skirt the rules to get ahead run rampant in the party. Until Republicans can clean up their own house, they will continue to corrode into a party incapable and unworthy of victory.
