Republican Party Down....By Jay Cost

[mystery-ak]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/republican-party-down/article/2002180

Republican Party Down
Trump and the decaying GOP.

May 09, 2016 | By Jay Cost

As the Trump campaign steamrolls ahead, most of us are still scratching our heads. How could this have happened? The usual answer focuses on the grievances of the Trump voter: economic anxiety, frustration with the status quo in politics, the desire to see somebody “tell it like it is," and so on.

But that's only part of the story. While it is important to appreciate the frustrations of those at the base of the party pyramid, we should not overlook problems nearer the top of the party architecture. Systemic institutional weaknesses, combined with a lack of leadership, have facilitated Trump in his takeover of the Republican party. The GOP is in grim shape, and Trump is a consequence of the party's debility as much as he is a cause.

Edmund Burke defined a political party as "a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed." The Jeffersonian Republicans expanded on and democratized Burke's idea. As James Madison writes in "A Candid State of Parties":

The Republican party, as it may be termed, conscious that the mass of people in every part of the union, in every state, and of every occupation must at bottom be with them, both in interest and sentiment, will naturally find their account .  .  . in banishing every other distinction than that between enemies and friends to republican government, and in promoting a general harmony among the latter, wherever residing, or however employed.

continued

[sinkspur]

The conclusion is worth posting:

It is fair to ask: What is the point of the Republican party these days? It has won an extraordinary number of offices over the last several cycles, as voters have registered their discontent with Obama-style liberalism. But to what purpose? If we believe Burke and Madison, then a party should elevate and manage the public discourse, around principles that advance the general welfare. Nobody honestly believes today's Republican party is capable of this on a national level. Instead, the complaint of Iowa senator James Grimes from 1870 is much closer to the mark:

"It looks at this distance as though the Republican party was "going to the dogs"—which, I think, is as it should be. Like all parties that have an undisturbed power for a long time, it has become corrupt, and I believe that it is to-day the [most] corrupt and debauched political party that has ever existed. "

Such a party hardly has the wherewithal to resist a demagogue like Trump. Lacking sensible organizations or trusted leadership, the party was vulnerable to such an infiltration, and he sensed it.

Perhaps it is time for those of us who genuinely believe that conservative principles will advance the national interest to consider the concluding line of Grimes's complaint: "I have made up my mind that when I return home I will no longer vote the Republican ticket, whatever else I may do." If the Republican party is not capable of advancing conservatism, the challenge will be to find a vehicle that actually can.

[Relic]

Just as Obama is a symptom, Trump is a symptom as well.

Obama is the symptom of a deluded, shallow public mind. Trump is the symptom of a weak, corrupt political party. Obama has achieved much in his transformation of America, making her weaker, and less effective. Trump will bring the same to the Republican party. Without intervention, the both affected entities, America, and the Republican party will fail. It's a race to see which falls first.