Profiles in Paralysis

by Ross Douthat

March 19, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/profiles-in-paralysis.html?comments&_r=0#permid=17949695:17949753

The huge mistake which the whole Republican "establishment" is making, is to pretend that the "sudden rise of Trumpism" is the cause of the current "existential" problems within the GOP and the "Conservative movement".

The truth is that for decades, indeed several generations now, the Conservatives and the Republican establishment have been knowingly and maliciously mining the worst instincts in all of us in their dogmatically crazed efforts to turn America into a fever induced vision of something that may have existed and worked 200 years ago, in the frontier days and the "wild west" era.

The Republicans have systematically undermined any belief in the need for civility, compromise, mutual trust and social cohesiveness. Their mantra, since "Saint Reagan" has been that the government is the problem, and they have now reaped what they have sown: a significant minority of Americans have come to believe this nonsense. 

First the Tea Party reared its ugly head, taking to heart the GOP mantra that government is the (only) problem, and this nihilistic fanaticism of the Tea Party, as most clearly personified by Ted Cruz, took over control of the GOP like a cancer - forcing John Boehner from office.

The lack of civility too, has been long in coming, exemplified by the Boehner/McConnell doctrine, that the highest priority was to make Obama fail, together with their tacit complicity in the hideous attacks on Obama as a "Nigerian-born Muslim".

Douthat helped create this monster.