Subject: Where were Republican moderates 20 years ago? - The Washington Post
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2016 18:54:18 -0500

Where were Republican moderates 20 years ago? - The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/where-were-republican-moderates-20-years-ago/2016/03/03/4c1c49c2-e18b-11e5-846c-10191d1fc4ec_story.html

Where were Republican moderates 20 years ago?

A main cause of the rise of extremism in the world of Islam has been the
cowardice of Muslim moderates, who for decades chose not to condemn bad
ideas and ugly rhetoric. Fearing that they’d be seen as ideological
weaklings, they’ve avoided confronting the cancer in plain sight. It is now
clear that a similar dynamic has been at play in the world of conservatism.

Mitt Romney should be congratulated for making a speech
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/03/mitt-romney-trump-is-a-phony-a-fraud-who-is-playing-the-american-public-for-suckers/>
calling Donald Trump a phony and a fraud. But where was he in 2012, when
Trump was pushing his nasty — and utterly false
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/more-birther-nonsense-from-donald-trump-and-sarah-palin/2011/04/11/AFrme2MD_blog.html>
— campaign casting doubt
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/more-birther-nonsense-from-donald-trump-and-sarah-palin/2011/04/11/AFrme2MD_blog.html>
on President Obama’s U.S. citizenship?
Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the
host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for The
Atlantic. *View Archive*
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/fareed-zakaria>

By Trump’s side <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwzGMmGcJw> in Las Vegas,
as E.J. Dionne Jr. reminds us in his book “Why the Right Went Wrong
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1476763798/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1476763798&linkCode=as2&tag=thewaspos09-20&linkId=BZTV3KVZKIKU5IDV>.”
“There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life,”
Romney gushed. “Having his endorsement is a delight. I am so honored and
pleased.” And although he generally eschewed “birtherism,” Romney fed the
fires later that year
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2012/08/24/mitt-romney-no-ones-asked-for-my-birth-certificate/>
by joking that “no one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.”

There have always been radicals on both sides of the political spectrum.
But what is different about the conservative movement is that, since the
1990s, some of its most distinguished mainstream members have embraced the
rhetoric and tactics of the extremes. A memo
<http://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html> put out by Newt Gingrich’s
political action committee that decade urged Republican candidates to use
savage rhetoric against their Democratic opponents. Some of the recommended
words were “failure,” “pathetic,” “disgrace” and “incompetent.” In the past
month, Trump has called Mitt Romney a “failed candidate,” Jeb Bush
“pathetic,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) “a disgrace” and Obama “totally
incompetent.” Perhaps he read the memo.

It is gratifying to see the National Review
<http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430137/donald-trump-conservative-movement-menace>
mobilize against Trump, decrying his “free-floating populism” and disdain
for the details of public policy. But where were the magazine’s editors
when Sarah Palin put these same forces on full display eight years ago?
Loudly cheering her on. National Review’s editor praised her
<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/trump-made-republicans-half-aware-of-racism.html>
for her “plain-spoken, combative way.” And he was more restrained than the
editor of the Weekly Standard, William Kristol, who called Palin
<http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/27/the-insiders> his
“heartthrob.”

Palin knew next to nothing about national or international public policy,
but she almost celebrated that ignorance, playing to the
anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism of parts of the conservative base.
Instead of pointing out that knowledge and expertise are actually things to
admire and acquire, not mock, conservative intellectuals expressed
admiration. Robert Kagan
<http://www.politico.com/story/2008/09/gop-foreign-policy-experts-cool-on-palin-013368?o=1>,
a distinguished writer and a contributing columnist to The Post, declared:
“I don’t take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class
knows everything about the world. I’m not generally impressed that they are
better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have
Palin’s experience.”

It is courageous of dozens of Republican foreign policy leaders
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/03/02/in-new-letter-republican-foriegn-policy-experts-declare-war-on-trump/>
now to sign an open letter
<http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/open-letter-on-donald-trump-from-gop-national-security-leaders/>
condemning Trump publicly and refusing to support his candidacy. But over
the past decade, I can recall conversations with some of these individuals
in which they refused to accept that there was any problem within the
Republican Party, attributing such criticism to media bias.

We still see this denial, with the truly bizarre claim by some in the media
that the rise of Trump is really all the fault of . . . Obama. The logic is
varied. For some, it is because he has been so weak. The Wall Street Journal
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-obama-trump-dialectic-1449621957>
editorial page opined, “The oldest truism in politics is that demagogues
flourish in the absence of leadership.” (I must confess to never having
heard of that “truism” and wondered how it would explain the rise of Father
Charles E. Coughlin and Huey Long during Franklin Roosevelt’s reign, or
Joseph McCarthy under Dwight Eisenhower.) For others
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/opinion/sunday/from-obama-to-trump.html?mtrref=www.google.com&assetType=opinion>,
however, it is because Obama has been too strong, abusing executive power
and elevating himself to center stage. Apparently having Oprah share the
stage with you leads to authoritarian populism.

Here is a much simpler explanation for Donald Trump: Republicans have fed
the country ideas about decline, betrayal and treason. They have encouraged
the forces of anti-intellectualism, obstructionism and populism. They have
flirted with bigotry and racism. Trump merely chose to unashamedly embrace
all of it, saying plainly what they were hinting at for years. In doing so,
he hit a jackpot.

The problem is not that Republican leaders should have begun to condemn
Trump last year. It is that they should have condemned the ideas and
tactics that led to his rise when they began to flourish 20 years ago.

*Read more from Fareed Zakaria’s archive
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/fareed-zakaria>, follow him on
Twitter <https://twitter.com/fareedzakaria> or subscribe to his updates on
Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria>.*

Eric D. Schwerin
[email-masked]

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