What Happened to GOP…?

Dear Editor,

What’s happened to the Republican Party we used to know?

I remember when being a fiscal conservative used to be the calling card of the Republican party, but today they have completely rejected that philosophy by endorsing a spending bill — that while providing millions of dollars in tax relief to the wealthiest 2 percent -— will add trillions to our federal deficit. (Democrats who opposed that bill are the fiscal conservatives of today.)

The last Democratic president left us with a growing economy, deficits under control and 15 million fewer Americans without health insurance. More jobs were created in our former president’s last 16 months than in Trump’s first 16 months. And instead of trying to fix our immigration system, Trump and his supporters have committed atrocities at our border by separating children from the parents of those seeking asylum in our country. (And they still have no plan as to how to reunite all these families.)

What happened to those moderate Republicans who used to support a strong defense, but also showed compassion to those less fortunate?

As well-known conservative, Max Boot, a writer and foreign policy adviser to John McCain in 2008 and to Mitt Romney in 2012, reminded Republicans recently, “You used to belong to a conservative party with a white-national fringe. Now it’s a white nationalist party with a conservative fringe.

“I would take Obama back in a microsecond,” he said. “His presidency appears to be a lost golden age when reason and morality reigned. All of his faults, real as they were, fade into insignificance compared with the   crippling defects of his successor.”

Another GOP moderate, Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 campaign, has also resigned from the party. “I became a member of the Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life,” Schmidt wrote. “Today, I renounce my membership. It is fully the party of Trump.”

Boot says that while he respects conservatives who stay and are willing to fight “to reclaim a once-great party that freed the slaves and helped win the cold war, personally, I’ve thrown up my hands in despair at the debased state of the GOP. I don’t want to be identified with the party of child-snatchers.”

Jim Ramsey
Sandpoint