Posted on July 31,
2016
Republicans, No More
Sir Thomas wouldn’t fit in today’s GOP
by
Daniel
Clark
During his speech at the Republican National
Convention, Sen. Ted Cruz congratulated Donald Trump for winning the
nomination, supported Trump’s idea of building a border wall, agreed with
Trump’s most recently stated position on Middle Eastern refugees, and
thoroughly denounced Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. It was more than enough to fulfill his pledge
to “support” (not formally endorse) his party’s nominee. Nevertheless, his fellow Republicans roundly
castigated him as some kind of traitor.
Cruz’s
most fervent detractor has been none other than that unimpeachable authority on
political decorum, Gov. Chris Christie (campaign slogan: “I’m from Jersey! Shut up!”).
Christie characterized Cruz’s speech as “selfish” and accused him of
disloyalty to the party. Rep. Peter King
of New York parroted Trump’s baseless accusations from the primary campaign,
calling Cruz “a fraud and a self-centered liar.” Finding a Republican in Cleveland who was
willing to defend Cruz was like playing “Where’s Waldo.” It took Newt Gingrich, who’s no longer an
active politician, to recognize that Cruz had given a basically pro-Trump
speech, even though he never said the words, “Vote for Trump.”
Mind you, it was Christie, after Hurricane Sandy in
2012, who couldn’t keep is hands of President Obama during an extended
photo-op, less than a week from Election Day, and at a time when Mitt Romney
felt compelled to suspend his campaign in deference to the storm’s
victims. Obviously, his problem with
Cruz cannot be that the Texas senator isn’t sufficiently loyal to his party and
its nominee. To get an idea of what
Christie and many of his colleagues are really driving at, one might remember
the alleged disloyalty of another politician, Sir Thomas More, in A Man for All Seasons.
In one scene, More’s friend, the Duke of Norfolk,
tries unsuccessfully to convince him to go along with the crowd in support of
King Henry’s divorce and remarriage. An
exasperated Norfolk finally exclaims, “It’s disproportionate! We’re
supposed to be the arrogant ones, the proud, splenetic ones, and we’ve all
given in! Why must you stand out?”
Christie, King, and many other Republicans who hold
themselves in high regard have gone far beyond supporting Trump, but have
groveled and debased themselves at his feet.
Christie in particular has allowed himself to be used as a stage prop,
apparently in exchange for a payoff he’s never received, while dutifully
referring to “Mister Trump” as
required. How disproportionate must it
seem for Cruz, a Tea Partier and relative political neophyte, to strut around
so 
independently,
with his insubordinate talk about voting one’s conscience?
Gov. Christie behaves like a pugilistic drunk, who
tries to provoke innocent bystanders with the accusatory question, “You think you’re better than me?” That’s what he really means to say to Cruz,
as much as he’d prefer to sound like he’s defending some principle or
other. Where does Cruz get off, emerging
from his primary defeat with his self-respect intact, after the proud,
splenetic Christie has reduced himself to the world’s largest ventriloquist
dummy?
Through much of its history, the Republican Party has
been a place where a principled individualist like Sir Thomas might have felt
at home. A man who was motivated by
loyalty to God and country, and was absolutely faithful to the letter of the
written law would have fit right in, even if many of his colleagues disagreed
with his conclusions, or thought his methods to be unwise. That was before the GOP inverted itself, from
a bottom-up grassroots party committed to government by the consent of the
people, into another tyrannical, top-down party that thinks it exists for the
purpose of preserving its own hierarchy.
Today’s Republican Party is just another organ of the
elitist harrumphing class, that openly holds its own voting base in contempt,
and has become so insular that it treats a temporary, partial shutdown of
nonessential government operations as if it were a fate worse than global
annihilation. Anymore, a predominantly
Christian group of Constitution-waving citizen activists will elicit as hostile
a response from the Republican leadership as it will from the socialist
Democrats. What part of their message is
it that’s so offensive? Exercise fiscal
responsibility? Stop burdening us with so
many regulations and taxes? Respect our
fundamental rights to life, liberty and property?
The Republicans still make a pretense of standing for
these same things, except that they give in, with remarkable and growing
frequency. Nevertheless, they are
arrogant, proud and splenetic, and they won’t stand to be shamed in contrast to
those who so impudently stand by their principles.
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