Look at the headlines, listen to the news, watch the pundits giving their commentaries across the spectrum of cable shows - the world is in a genuinely unimaginable place, one that reveals the strain of relying on the young & untried, stumbling about without in arrogance & unfounded confidence.
Many of my older friends are lifelong Republicans, both fiscally & socially conservative. But I think about my mother, about her friends. Would the party of 2015 still hold their allegiance?
In 2000, my mother did something shocking - she didn't vote for a presidential candidate. She could not bring herself to vote for George W. Bush, a man who didn't meet any of her criteria for president, nor could she push the D lever for Al Gore, who met all her criteria save political party. Mom always said that folks who didn't vote deserved what they got, voting was as natural to her as scrubbing her teeth or washing her face. But in what she assumed would be (and was) the last presidential election of her life, Mom didn't vote. Because the GOP let her down in its nominee.
Thank goodness Mom died less than a year after George W. Bush took office. She would have been appalled at the dumbing down of the GOP, at how any well educated person started being painted with the tarnishing term, intellectual elite. She would have been horrified at not only the rise of the "know nothing" Tea Party & the intentional gutting of the party of moderates & the ridiculing of its elder statesmen.
Look around us - the chaos that's abroad is sadly not surprising, the desire to give into ego-satisfying reaction rather than wisely crafted response. It shows the lack of a wise hand on the political tiller.
Every issue that was a hot button in my life is active today. Civil rights, Roe v. Wade, women's rights, Medicare, Social Security, war. Legislation & court decisions with one thing in common - conservatives have wanted them gone for generations - have been brought front & center, with the hope of either gutting or overthrowing.
Throw in a few others - religious extremism (Christian & Muslim), a presidential campaign high on emotion & invective but low on grounded reality, a president that conservatives still tar as anti-American & cast into deep dark shadows with "something's going on with him (the president) that we don't know about."
Alas, I am sad to say that this was inevitable, the natural outcome of trashing the wisdom of older people, tossing it & them out because firebrand politicians & their fervent followers WANT to take the brakes off, want to be able to think from emotion & act from unthinking passion. Ted Cruz is the exemplar of a youngster who wants to have his temper tantrums, who sticks out his tongue at elders who might advise caution, who scoffs at fuddy-duddies who warn, "Wait & thing, then act."
This is the very behavior that a small but fiercely vocal base tells the party they want. They are sick & tired of being held back from their firm belief in our nation's manifest destiny ("The United States has a manifest destiny to eventually become a glorious example of God's law under a restored Constitution that will inspire the entire human race.").
These are people who consider any regulation to help better regulate gun control to be that devil, Barack Obama, coming after all their guns. They don't trust the government, they don't trust politicians, they don't trust the media - the only thing they trust is what their gut tells them. And it wants BOLD ACTION, not wiser, more experienced men & women reining them in.
It is true that the roles have changed, that the GOP is now the party of young candidates. Bernie Sanders & Hillary are considerably older than Marco Rubio & Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio & Ted Cruz also offer something that is highly desirable about today's conservative base - lack of experience on the political stage. No denying that both Bernie & Hillary come with the "baggage" of knowing the ropes around Washington D.C. & other world capitals. What an electorate once looked for, the current GOP base now reviles. Amazing.
How do we counterbalance this current state of political affairs? I haven't the slightest idea. The GOP conservative base set out to rid itself of moderates, reviles longtime elected officials who don't meet their criteria of true Republican & primaries them out of office, distrust & disdain party elders, consider it reasonable & flat-out righteous to throw a costly temper tantrum with no hope of achieving its proclaimed ends. (As Salon.com so aptly describes, "Hardcore conservatives ... want to fight now because they’re angry, and when you’re angry the only proper thing to do is to punch something over and over, even if it’s your own face.")
There is no solution, at least not one that comes to my mind. The damage is done & the results are exactly what the folks who drove it hoped for - no experienced drivers cautioning slow down, no one's at the wheel, most of the available drivers are newly licenses or just got their learner's permits. Oh, and the mechanics intentionally removed the brakes.
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