This year’s GOP platform does not call for a federal ban on abortion. The team crafting it worked with the Log Cabin Republicans to excise any language that could be interpreted as being anti-LGB. And then Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance – a dedicated opponent of Ukraine war funding who has repeatedly called for the U.S. to pull back from our foreign military engagements – as his Vice Presidential nominee.
It’s not your father’s GOP anymore.
For years, the Republican Party has, campaign rhetoric aside, functioned on only three real principles: lower taxes, social conservatism, and aggressive foreign military engagement. Now, only taxes are left standing. A lot of long-time GOP loyalists aren’t happy about it.
What these folks are missing is that the radical shift in the GOP platform and the priorities of GOP voters is entirely their fault. Most of the past platforms adopted by the Party were little more than a sham – window dressing to keep activists happy while their elected officials capitulated, repeatedly, to Democrats on all but two issues: taxes and war. Every other plank in past platforms got tossed aside to make way for lower taxes, more war, and an unopposed Democrat domestic agenda.
GOP activist anger over those repeated betrayals is real, and grew in darkness for decades until Donald Trump showed up. I was not a Trump supporter in the 2016 primaries for the simple reason that I had given up on ever having a Presidential candidate who would deliver on the campaign promises they had made. And Trump’s claims were even more outrageous than those who came before him. GOP primaries had become a Biggest Liar audition, and I saw Trump as merely the most brazen competitor in that audition. Then he got elected, and President Trump went out and proved me (and many others) entirely wrong. Trump got into office, and started methodically working to deliver on what he’d said during his campaign. He started winding down our engagement in the Middle East, and he did it by annihilating ISIS and backing Israel to the hilt – just like he said he would. He took on China on trade, Europe for underfunding NATO, and cracked down on the border. Trump delivered on his promises in a way that has forever changed the Republican Party. But he also did more than that. Trump and the America First agenda he championed didn’t merely set a new bar for future candidates to clear; he tore down the walls of the establishment, and opened the doors to an entirely new GOP.
The old GOP was driven by the corporate bosses of America. The new GOP is driven by people who work for them. The old GOP was beholden to defense contractors. The new GOP belongs to soldiers. The old GOP built its morality around churches. The new GOP is centered on humanism. Elites moved from the backing the GOP to going all-in for leftism. The working class did the opposite. And that’s the core of the shift: the Republican Party can no longer afford to be the domain of business leaders, think tanks, and religious moralists. The new GOP must fully embrace being the party of the people.
Those feeling left behind should take solace in their own words. For years, the GOP establishment told base activists that even though they disagreed on some issues, they were aligned on 80% of everything; and therefore core activists needed to be willing to support traditional GOP candidates in November, rather than risk electing people who would agree with them on nothing. That was correct, and it’s time for traditional GOPers to heed their own words, because we still agree on 80% of everything, the only difference is what sub-group within the Party gets to pick the 20% on which we don’t.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Sam Stone only and not his co-host Chuck Warren or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
