When Did Conservatives Surrender the GOP to Trumpery?

“Conservatives” - in my experience - honor marriage vows, respect truth, and eschew tawdry material excesses, placing moral principle far about crass “winning!” as if governance were a dissolute casino pastime.

They go Emily Postal, observing the traditional amenities with scrupulous decorum, coming to a respectful halt at a stop sign when there is not another vehicle anywhere on the horizon, but civc consciousness and conscience prevail.

Their comments are tempered, never hysterical, understated, never brayed; their actions careful, never reckless; their demeanor modest, never boastful.

They champion the individual, and would never tolerate the usurpation by Big Government bureaucrats of a woman’s dominion over her own womb, nor endorse the commandeering of local law enforcement by intrusive federal agencies demanding that the locals perform the feds' duties for them rather than respecting their own.

They extol the nuclear family paradigm, and would never cede to abusers of power the right to tear them apart as if the separable chattels of a slave market.

They hold commerce as a sacrosanct human activity, and consider instigating trade wars via tariffs as an unacceptable interference by politicians, and an odious constraint on the free market - the grasping of a puny hand, not Adam Smith's invisible one.

They regard the most egregious sin of The State to be bloating the national debt, an irresponsible pocket-picking of our defenseless progeny.

Where did they go?

"I'M THE 'KING OF DEBT'!"​

 

None around here, apparently.

Did anyone see them leave?

 

I think I've said this a couple times now. I'm not defending the conservative movement, as I don't really consider myself a part of it anymore. That said, Conservatives feel like they have been backed into a corner by society, and Trump is the only way they see how to fight back against the waves of condemnation and blatant attempts to destroy their way of life.

 

You don't have a clue!

 

We have left the "Republican" party and have become independent.

 

why the quotes?

 

I think this is a very good point. Years of being told what not to say - and perhaps think - has brought this. It has caused some conservatives to morph into reactionaries. The term "conservative" no longer means what it did, it is another name for reactionary. But it's a natural outcome of holding the lid on views/comments which were deemed unsuitable. It's not healthy for any society to suppress "unacceptable" views. The lid will eventually blow off.

 

Some of that is the never ending cycle of faux victimisation being spread by the right wing click bait so called news sources

A gay restruant owner yells at a Christian diner

A kid has "Trump for President" photoshopped off his T shirt on a school photo

Chicken little threads with one common theme

" The world is against us"

Sorry but get out there and start volunteering to aid those in real need and this attitude will evaporate

 

Then enlighten everyone

 

I don't think you are wrong, but when a federal judge nominee is being told she can't serve on the bench because she is Catholic, that raises red flags for some people on right.

 

Agreed that there are reasons for concern but keep in mind that the main aim of the Russian cyber attack , which everyone but Trump admits is still continuing, is to sow discord. What better way than to have one group feel constantly aggrieved and picked on?

 

Well, first of all there was always a tension between Republicans and conservatives. There was a time when the Republican tent was fairly large allowing for the fiscally conservative, and socially liberal wing of the party to exist, and sometimes lead. To those of us who grew up Republican in the 40s and 50s here in the north the idea of not allowing a women the right to chose is anathema to our principle of keeping the government out of our private lives.

 

I don't think a Russian Facebook campaign towards meanness is really affecting the decline of American civility. Russians didn't call Trump voters a basket of deplorables and they didn't come up with the lock her up chants.

 

They recognized that there is a self appointed elite that fancy themselves as leaders of Conservatism that throw in with globalists and socialist types. Not to mention any names but a few of their initials are, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Jeff Flake, George Will, Paul Ryan and several others. They love to keep things going as usual. There's too much money to lose if they don't. Another reason to have term limits.

 

I think the tent is still pretty large

 

It sounds rather paranoid to abandon a perfectly respectable political party, but if they "feel like they have been backed into a corner by society," they must consider themselves distinct from society. Were they to identify with society and feel they had something to offer to it, they would not have surrendered their party to Trumpery so readily.

Still, the fact that the self-righteous evangelicals among them would so readily kowtow to a collector of trophy wives who shamelessly cheats on them indicates there is something irrational in their passionate embrace of such a conspicuous slut.

 

They do see themselves separated from society, because for years they have been told that if they aren't "tolerant" towards others, then they aren't welcome.

 

I'd be prepared to re-take the Party and fumigate it.

 

Most trump voters are far more conservative than the RINOs in washington

 

I wouldn't be opposed to that, but once you do that, you better replace it with something that's competent and consistent

 

Yes, a vestige of that limited government is still to be found in overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts where a traditional Republican governor is the most popular in the nation. It give the term "progressive" rather an ironic aspect.

 

Only with very creative re-imaginings of the word "conservative" that neglect free market principles entirely and focus, instead, on xenophobia and nativism.

 

The Trump cultists are the RINOs.

 

The Republican party does not support Republican ideals anymore. Its leader is a divisive, incompetent individual. He ain't no Ronald Reagan

 

That wouldn't be my sense of it. I see the beginning of the end having started in the 60s, and 70s. When the religious right was allowed into the Republican party eventually it was going to wind up where it is now.