The GOP leadership, long grown ashamed of its own conservative base voters, refuses to stand for anything, anymore. No fight, large or small is worth the effort and the risk of losing the power and perquisites that they crave.
The hard work of making coherent arguments and explaining them in terms that ordinary people can understand is embraced not by politicians, but by statesmen. Today, our elites don't go to Washington because they believe in the power of ideas, but rather because they are animated by the idea of power.
Democrats will always win that battle, because they believe in government not as a necessary bulwark against tyranny on one hand or anarchy on the other, but as a means of transforming society toward their own, self-serving political ideals.
Donald Trump shares that view, in his own way, and has attracted the support of Republicans who believe in government power and authority no less than do Progressive Democrats. Their policy preferences might differ greatly, but they share a belief in government coercion in the service of electoral majorities rather than the fundamental human right to free minds, free markets, and a defined limit to state power, all of which inhere in America's constitution.
