The Republican's Faustian Bargain Is No Longer a Matter of Conjecture

Much has been said and written about the Khizr Khan's' presentation at the Democratic National Convention, Donald Trump's response, and Mr. and Mrs. Khans' reply. And so many people seem perplexed at the failure of so many prominent Republican politicians to condemn Trump's latest outrage, and to break with their Party's presidential nominee. Each outrage seems even worse than the previous one, yet what is left of the Republican Establishment tries to ignore the fact that the Party's nominee is an ignorant, mean-spirited bully who would endanger American Constitutional Government, might well be in cahoots with Vladimir Putin, and could also plunge the world headlong into economic wars, shooting wars. or both.

But the answer to this odd behavior on the part of Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Marco Rubio, Governor Mike Pence et al. seems to me to be really quite simple. The traditional base of the Republican Party has decided to enter into a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump, hoping against hope that he will not actually be the Devil.

It is pretty clear that Donald Trump -- who does not care about substantive policies, but does care about winning the White House -- is willing, as the price of power, to go along with whatever policies traditional Republican base politicians want.

Right-wing social conservatives are so sure that their theological views concerning women's reproductive rights and the legitimacy of being LGBT are so correct, and mandated by God, that they are willing to risk the American Constitutional Republic (and even the survival of the nation) to enshrine their views in the Constitution through the appointment of the next several justices of the Supreme Court.

And Ayn Rand conservatives are so hostile to any governmental role in the health of the nation that they are similarly willing to risk the American Constitutional Republic (and even the survival of the nation) in order to destroy the New Deal and all the progress that grew out of it.

Now when they first made that Faustian bargain, the Social and Ayn Rand conservatives probably comforted themselves with the thought that Trump did not really mean all that he said -- that he was just another ambitious politician. This fig leaf has frayed, and it is no longer even a G-string. That the risk they were willing to run is looking more and more like a near-certainty may be making them more queasy about the Faustian bargain they made.

But will they ever place the danger to the Republic and the nation as a priority over their hatred of women's and LGBT rights, or their hatred of governmental "interference" in the invisible hand of the free market? That is the dilemma they face. It is a moral test they are not likely to pass.