The Wages of Political Extremism

Republicans Are Losing the Summer

I’ve not been shy about the failures of the Democratic Party when it comes to cultural issues; indeed, I still believe the various forms of self-indulgent leftish wokery will be a burden in 2024—though not as important as the personal qualities of the nominees (especially if one of them is Donald Trump). But I’m sensing a zeitgeist shift this summer: the culture wars are breaking toward the Democrats—and the Democrats are becoming more judicious about how they talk about cultural issues.

Exhibit A is abortion, of course. The Ohio referendum reinforces what a loser this issue has become for Republicans. But there’s also Exhibit B: Affirmative Action. The Dems haven’t pressed the case for racial preferences since the Supreme Court ruled against them. There was a brief ebb tide of hand-wringing, especially by reflexive liberal columnists. But there haven’t been protests or over-the-top speeches by “activists.” No Democrat is making the restoration of affirmative action a centerpiece of their campaign, so far as I can tell. It may be that this was always a peripheral issue, affecting only a sliver of candidates at elite colleges; it may be that most people recognize that—like the public insistence on the right to an early-term abortion—multi-racial diversity is part of the American fabric now, despite what the Supreme Court may rule. It is certainly true that most Americans oppose racial preferences and now the issue is off the table.

Exhibit C is Donald Trump. None of his fellow Republicans are willing to say he won the election anymore. This may not hurt Trump, but it surely won’t help. And it won’t help his opponents, either: What took them so long? What will they say about the particulars of Jack Smith’s case—like the fake electors scheme? How will their namby-pamby responses play in the real world? The leader of their party lied to their constituents. That is abuse. Their pussy-footing is weakness.

Exhibit D is the blasted heat and assorted meteorological craziness this summer. It’s getting harder to say that climate change is a hoax. Why, it may even cause some folks to think twice before they buy that gas-guzzling super-sized pickup. Paul Krugman believes that this is a culture war issue, a rebellion of the masses against the considered views of the scientific elites. If so, the masses are losing to the sweltering reality of their lives.

There are other wisps in the wind. It’s been a hot summer, but not a particularly violent one. There have been fewer egregious cases of police misbehavior—a victory, perhaps, attributable to the presence of body cams and better training. The Southern border has been relatively quiet. Another thing: I’ve noticed that the pernicious euphemism “gender-affirming treatment” is being shelved in favor of more accurate descriptions of sex-change procedures. Haven’t seen “Latinx” used too often, either. Is it possible that the Democrats are finally shedding their deference to the academic-leftist culture screamers? One would hope.

And the Republican response? They seem to be getting crazier. They seem to have declared war on every American institution, from the military to the US Women’s soccer team. Much of this is Trump-driven, of course. The acolytes of Orange have been leading the charge against a non-existent “weaponization” of the Justice system, with special emphasis on the sleek, hard-eyed prosecutor Jack Smith. Trump’s state of mind can always be discerned from what he calls his enemies. He calls Smith “deranged.” I’d guess that Trump is scared shiftless.

Trump sets the tone, but other less adept GOP practitioners are in on it, too. Does Ron DeSantis really believe that there’s profit to be had defending slavery? Why couldn’t he just say, “We blew it on that one; we’ll change the curriculum?” Does Nikki Haley really oppose red-flag laws that make it harder for crazy people to buy guns? Well, here’s what she said: “I don’t trust that they won’t take them away from people who rightfully deserve to have them.”

And then there’s Vivek Ramaswamy, a test-tube libertarian who wants to abolish both the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI. (My definition of a libertarian is someone who’s never had a serious run of bad luck.) Matt Labash, hilarious and brilliant as ever, eviscerates Vivek here.

At its best, the old Republican sensibility was honest, cautious, Main Street business conservatism. It was Bob Dole. That voice still can be heard at the periphery of the party. I hear it whenever Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska—a former co-chair of the bipartisan For Country caucus of military veterans—weighs in. But ugliness and cynicism are the main courses on the Republican menu these days. They are personified by Greg Gutfeld, whose late night Fox show is all the rage among the hateful. Gutfeld defended Ron DeSantis on slavery, citing Viktor Frankl—violently out of context—on the holocaust: skills kept Jews alive in the concentration camps. The Auschwitz museum slapped back:

“…While it is accurate to acknowledge that some Jews may have survived temporarily due to their perceived usefulness, it is crucial to remember that the Holocaust was a systematic genocide with the ultimate aim of exterminating the entire Jewish population.” (Including Greg’s grandparents, one assumes.)

The delusional corruption has seeped into the intellectual reaches of the Republican Party as well. Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute has been a valuable voice against the excesses of left-academia like critical race theory, but in an essay in the Institute’s usually sane publication City Journal, he totally jumps the shark, calling for a counter-revolution:

The urgent task for the political Right today is to comprehend the dynamics of revolution and counterrevolution and to create a strategy for dislodging the New Left ideology of 1968, which has solidified control over the most fundamental structures of American society.

Say what? The urgent task of the political right today is to just calm the hell down. The tyranny of political correctness is certainly worth opposing. I think Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs are generally a guilt-ridden waste of time and money. But the New Left ideology was happily interred decades ago, except among the hapless culture-hermits of the academic left. It is a crazy paranoid fantasy to believe, with Tommy Tuberville, that the U.S. military is “woke,” for example—but Rufo does. He also equates Black Lives Matter—a group that opposes police violence—with the Black Panthers, a group that advocated violence against the police. Black Lives Matter is problematic, especially in its unwillingness to address the root causes of crime in the black community, but Rufo is tendentiously sloppy here.

And worse, only someone who has led a sheltered life, who has never experienced the chaos of violence, would advocate a counterrevolution, even metaphorically. It’s just too dangerous. I learned my lesson in 1978 when I visited Beirut in the midst of its civil war and saw a civilized city destroyed by anarchy. I will never forget the image of two militias fighting furiously—firing rocket-propelled-grenades, decimating each other with small arms fire—over control of the local Holiday Inn. Civilization is as flimsy as that. It’s hard work to sustain it; it takes real conservatism, a respect for the institutions of our society as well as a liberal willingness to change them when a real challenge, like climate change, comes along.

But this is where the Republican Party is and has been since Donald Trump: sheltered, self-indulgent, cowardly, play-acting with fire. I’m convinced that the leadership of the Republican Party, and the followership as well, are living a fantasy where they believe you can say the cruelest, stupidest things about America—that the 2020 election was stolen somehow; that the FBI is a left-wing operation—and expect that there will be no consequences. But there will be consequences The wages of extremism are savagery and barbarism; the wages of comity are peace and prosperity.

Two Big Ideas

John Ellis believes there’s a serious case to be made against Hunter Biden. Read it and weep.

Jonathan V. Last believes there’s a serious case to be made for Joe Biden to pardon Donald Trump. I’ve played with this idea in the past but, after Jack Smith’s coup-attempt indictment, I’m leaning more toward Charlie Sykes’ position: if you try to stage—pace Rufo—a.n attempt to overthrow the U.S. government, you must be punished.

And I’m grateful every day for The Bulwark, which publishes Last and Sykes and is, indeed, a bulwark of Sanity in a dangerous and silly public square.

My Book Pages: Luke Russert

I can’t be objective here. I loved Luke Russert’s father Tim, adore his mother Maureen Orth and I think Luke—named after the Paul Newman character in Cool Hand Luke, according to his dad—is pretty terrific, too. He certainly is courageous. He walked away from a sinecure in television. He was a fine Congressional reporter for NBC, but it just didn’t feel right and he walked away. Let me repeat that: he walked away from a life at the center of the action, a guaranteed seat at any Georgetown dinner party, a safe and “significant” and “serious” life. He decided to travel the world and his journey is recorded, with brutal candor, in his book Look For Me There. A lot of the travel writing is gorgeous, a lot of it is fun. But it’s the serious bits that grab you. His dad always saw fatherhood as superhero business; season tickets at the ballgame; introducing Luke to everyone, including the Pope. (I remember Tim telling me that he’d gotten red NBC baseball caps for the College of Cardinals, a white one for the Pope.) That was how Tim felt about family, about his dad, Big Russ and, of course, about Maureen. (I once watched a Buffalo Bills football game in a tavern with Russ and Tim; happily, they weren’t playing my beloved Jets or those Hibernian heathen might have pummeled me). I’d known Maureen since our days as writers at Rolling Stone. She introduced me to Tim, who introduced me to his boss, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who induced me to take my brain more seriously. And having read Luke’s book it’s Maureen who shines—as an intrepid traveler, as a force of moral rectitude and sanity, as the mom we all wished we had, as cool (boy, is she ever). And tough. She’s the one who asks, “When are you going to stop all this running around and figure out what comes next?” Luke is honest enough not to conclude the book with an aha! moment; he is painful and uncertain about his struggles to get to what comes next. I don’t know that he’s figured it out yet. But I know he will. Because he had the courage to write this book. Because his parents gave him strength and moral ballast and faith. I miss your dad, Luke. We all do. But we’ve got you. Godspeed, Skywalker!