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Dear John,
The Republican Party is over.
It once stood for limited government in our democracy, but those days are long gone. Now the GOP stands only for Trump and his authoritarianism.
The party’s demise is on full display at this week’s Republican National Convention.
It’s terribly dangerous to have one major political party with no principled core, no sense of right and wrong. The modern GOP’s only guiding principle is complete loyalty to Trump and a willingness to support his Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
We need to have more than one political party in America devoted to a sense of the common good, even if our interpretations of it may differ. However dirty politics may become, we need principled people in government on all sides.
Watch this week’s video, where I discuss how the demise of the Republican Party is tragic to me personally, from firsthand experience. Then share it with your friends, especially any who may be struggling to reconcile their conservative beliefs with the modern Trump party.
I’ve never been a Republican, but I witnessed the beginning of the party’s end. Republican President Gerald Ford gave me my first job in government in 1974, when I argued Supreme Court cases in his Department of Justice.
Ford was as far from being a MAGA Republican as any modern Democratic president, but his biggest mistake was to pardon Richard Nixon.
As a result, Nixon’s idea that the president is above the law was never really laid to rest. In 1977, Nixon told David Frost, “If the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
Not until the current Supreme Court gave Trump broad immunity for his official actions would we have imagined this lawless idea could become the law of the land. Nixon’s sickness infected the Republican Party. Then Donald Trump finished the job.
The demise of today’s Republican Party reveals how fragile our democracy has become. It illustrates what happens when presidents are not held accountable.
It shows that too many Americans have lost sight of our history and ideals, or have become so cynical and hopeless that they are willing to throw it all away for an atrocious con man.
Watch and share this week’s video, and join me in hoping that, after the Trump Republican Party is defeated this November, a pro-democracy party will fill the void.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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