We have a cavernous divide running directly through the middle of the Republican party: Donald Trump. Trump has always been a big personality and has made a lot of money on the ratings he brought in from being brash and divisive. He inspired the Republican party when he was willing (and often sought) confrontations with the media and called out their bias. So let us just call a spade a spade: Trump is a discordant leader even in the Republican party. He has had no trouble calling Republicans names, just as he does to his Democrat rivals. But this divisiveness has trickled down the party to the point that now county party leaders feel it necessary and desirous to create factions. Within the Republican party, it now seems that you can only fall into two camps: MAGA or RINO. There once was a saying that Republicanism was a big tent; one that welcomed the individualistic nature that so often comes with the principles of this founding and ideals of the party. Yet, today, we are creating a tent with a line drawn down the middle where we spend so much time mudslinging towards each other that we do not even make it out to defeat the party we solemnly swear against. What has happened to nuance? Can we oppose the heinous acts of the politicized government against Trump while at the same time supporting a different Republican primary candidate? Does opposing Biden mean that all Republicans must bend their knees and swear fealty to Trump and all his endorsed candidates? What advice should a Trump-led Republican party take from our founders?
Do we not benefit from having new Republican politicians step up and try to run for president? I see very little downside to the competition Trump went through to be nominated: we had new ideas (and old ones), we saw new names step up and, in the end, Trump had to earn the nomination. And he did. There is grave danger when your loyalty to the party is seen as loyalty towards a person and not to the constitution and the ideas it embodies. Loyalty to a person in name only sounds similar to the beat of a Democrat drum. An offshoot of the Trump disloyalty accusations was hearing the policies that the republican nominees had that differed from Trump’s and the false labeling of RINO thrown at candidates who dared to think differently. We sound hypocritical if we stand for the 1st Amendment yet try to shut down policy discussions within our party. Good policy results from a free market of ideas and those ideas being discussed and debated. Even in disagreement, we should be disregarding bad policy because it is a bad idea and not disparaging the person proposing it. When we attack people, we are succumbing to many logical fallacies, and it never truly defeats the idea itself.
So, are true conservatives only those who have supported Trump since 2015 and have never questioned him or his endorsed candidates? Instead of opposing Biden and the progressive wave, we are fighting over who has worn the red MAGA hat the longest and or who has opposed Trump the truest. We no longer have principled considerations about the Constitution but rather about personality. Instead of focusing on the chief resource that has made our party great, we have been distracted by personalities. It is the people that make the party great; Reagan and Lincoln came in and united and inspired but it was the culmination of the people that truly have defined the Republican party. It is the workers, the doers, the life creators, the pull themselves up by the bootstrap-ers that have kept Republicans at the helm of the American idea, not a celebrity. We have succumbed to adopting a progressive trope and wished upon ourselves a leader to guide us through the difficult times. We need to instead inspire the leader from the ground up to adopt the constitutional principles that have created the greatest amount of good a government has ever produced in recorded history.
Thus lies the issue and the divide and crossroads the Republican party is at: will we follow a leader or an idea? This country was founded on an idea and a vision. It is this bold idea that led to the greatest and most successful American politician to step away from politics at the height of his political influence. When Washington stepped away from the presidency, he set a precedent that he hoped all future generations would copy and that is a dedication to the country, the Constitution, and not to a person. Hamilton wrote about the dangers of following political leaders extensively because history is replete with examples of even good and well-intentioned leaders being either wrong or corrupted by their power. There should always be a healthy skepticism that is given towards any politician because of the power and legal use of force that they can control. Without the citizens providing the necessary check to the power of the politician, the incentives no longer favor Liberty and the Constitution. We live in a culture that is showing how this idea has already run out of control: most citizens generally trust that the government and the bureaucracies have the best intent for them. Meanwhile, the government has shown time and time again that it should not be trusted such as the IRS targeting political parties, parents being labeled domestic terrorists, or the perpetual unequal enactment of laws. We need to trust the fellow members of our political party more than the government; we need to trust our neighbors more than we ever trust our government. And most of us lock the door at night…
We often proclaim that the Republican party is the party of reason. While many of our ideas certainly show that, we have very quickly fallen into a passionate infighting of feelings. To bring sanity back to our political discourse, we must commit to independent thought and not rely on political leaders to tell us their potentially self-serving political ideologies to follow. We need to bring back thoughtful, nuanced, and meaningful political discussions without resorting to meaningless, and often baseless, attacks against those who hold moderately different ideas. Every one of us is human and therefore is imperfect, including Donald Trump. Debating for the future of our country is not only necessary but our posterity depends on it; we must remember that blindly following even wise and thoughtful leaders can be a path to danger. Wise and thoughtful citizens can occasionally be blinded by their bias and can be on the wrong side of matters that are important to society just as they can also be on the right side. We must abandon blindly following Trump and his every thought but instead engage in meaningful dialogue. This will not only push Trump to be a better President but will also help sustain the Republican party for the decades to come. Republicans supporting Republicans is still a better way to give our country the greatest opportunity to stay on the founder’s path than Republicans supporting only those that support a single candidate.
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