August 1, 2016

"It is not often that careful students of American politics talk seriously about the possible demise of a major party." However, some felt "that the suicidal trend to the right has passed beyond the point where it can be reversed." Such predictions were prompted by the capture of the GOP by an uncompromising right wing. What happened at the Republican convention "convinced many Americans that those extremists everyone had been hearing about were really in control . . . ."

No, that doesn’t describe the 2016 campaign, although it certainly could. Those and the following comments were published in 1966 in From Disaster to Distinction, a small book published by the Ripon Society, a Republican organization, criticizing the condition of the Party leading up to and through the election of 1964, when Senator Barry Goldwater was the GOP candidate. Then, as now, the Republican campaign was founded on reactionary fantasy: "If Goldwater's words were heresy to those who had painfully come to terms with the unpleasantness of a changing world, they were prophecy to those who dared to think that such a reconciliation might yet be avoided, that their illusions might still be spared."

Goldwater led the Republicans to a crushing defeat. Like Trump, his strategy aimed at "a consensus of discontent." Whether Trump will lead the Party to a similar loss and crisis of conscience is, at this point, very much in doubt. Even if that were to happen, its not at all clear that the remedy adopted would be that which the authors suggested after the Goldwater debacle: "The GOP cannot regenerate and rebuild itself without making an unapologetic commitment to the center of American politics. But the Republican party can never win the center of American politics unless it assigns the major responsibilities for leadership to dynamic Republican moderates." The book described the Ripon Society as "a group of young, progressive Republicans." How often recently have the last two words of that description appeared together?