Not a bad summary of the case for stopping Trump and Cruz at the convention.
But his finish is a delusion.
Along comes Donald Trump offering to replace it and change the nature of the G.O.P.
He tramples all over the anti-government ideology of modern Republicanism.
He would replace the free-market orthodoxy with authoritarian nationalism.
He offers to use government on behalf of the American working class, but in negative and defensive ways: to build walls, to close trade, to ban outside groups, to smash enemies.
According to him, America’s problems aren’t caused by deep structural shifts.
They’re caused by morons and parasites.
The Great Leader will take them down.
If the G.O.P. is going to survive as a decent and viable national party, it can’t cling to the fading orthodoxy Cruz represents.
But it can’t shift to ugly Trumpian nationalism, either.
It has to find a third alternative: limited but energetic use of government to expand mobility and widen openness and opportunity.
That is what Kasich, Rubio, Paul Ryan and others are stumbling toward.
Phooey.
Kasich, Rubio, and Ryan are not remotely three peas in the same pod, and none represents a way forward.
The way forward is the way back, emulation of Eisenhower and Nixon and Rockefeller.
They were, like Trump, friendly to the working class and the Big Government built by, at the time, over half a century of progressivism, in total contrast to its sworn enemies, followers of Goldwater whom they all three despised and whose conservatism they loathed.
A Republican Party willing to resume that identity can be a serious and viable competitor for the socially and economically further left Democratic Party.
But nobody who came to speak for any variety of Republicanism in the last few decades will say that, since all of them are conservatives, themselves, of one stripe or another.
If the G.O.P. is going to survive as a decent and viable national party, it can’t cling to the fading orthodoxy Cruz represents.
But it can’t shift to ugly Trumpian nationalism, either.
It has to find a third alternative: limited but energetic use of government to expand mobility and widen openness and opportunity.
That is what Kasich, Rubio, Paul Ryan and others are stumbling toward.
Phooey.
Kasich, Rubio, and Ryan are not remotely three peas in the same pod, and none represents a way forward.
The way forward is the way back, emulation of Eisenhower and Nixon and Rockefeller.
They were, like Trump, friendly to the working class and the Big Government built by, at the time, over half a century of progressivism, in total contrast to its sworn enemies, followers of Goldwater whom they all three despised and whose conservatism they loathed.
A Republican Party willing to resume that identity can be a serious and viable competitor for the socially and economically further left Democratic Party.
But nobody who came to speak for any variety of Republicanism in the last few decades will say that, since all of them are conservatives, themselves, of one stripe or another.
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