(My letter in yesterday's Washington Post. The headline in the print edition (“Conservatism sans compassion”) is a more accurate description, I think, than the online headline.)
In his Jan. 31 op-ed, “The presidential contest the nation doesn’t need,” Michael Gerson argued that Trumpism is not “the culmination and embodiment of Republicanism and conservatism.” I feel bad for Mr. Gerson, whose career certainly suggests that he desperately wished to believe in “compassionate conservatism” as the linchpin of the Republican Party. I fear he is deluding himself.
�The past half-century of Republican policies and political positioning has been careening to this moment. When push has come to shove, Republican politicians increasingly, and now almost exclusively, have chosen conservatism without compassion — and, indeed, often conservatism with meanness. At best, Mr. Gerson could quote Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” The recent Republican congressional votes and arguments on impeachment confirm that the Republican Party has now unambiguously taken the Trump Road, and “that has made all the difference.”
�The past half-century of Republican policies and political positioning has been careening to this moment. When push has come to shove, Republican politicians increasingly, and now almost exclusively, have chosen conservatism without compassion — and, indeed, often conservatism with meanness. At best, Mr. Gerson could quote Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” The recent Republican congressional votes and arguments on impeachment confirm that the Republican Party has now unambiguously taken the Trump Road, and “that has made all the difference.”
David S. Fishback
Olney
Olney
No comments:
Post a Comment