There is an ill wind blowing across America. It carries the promise of the imminent collapse of the Grand Old Party in November.
The GOP was once a well-respected, honored, and important component in American politics. It produced a long list of reputable, honest, and patriotic politicians.
The hallways and corridors in Congress are lined with busts of Republican legislators who held strong beliefs in a conservative and pragmatic philosophy of representative government.
The GOP has been hijacked by a renegade group of political extremists. They sing a Lorelei song that attracts a sycophant audience that is unaware of the dangers of an authoritarian government.
The Republican Party has become a sham. It no longer represents the aspirations of many traditional Republican voters.
It has become the Trump Party, completely divorced from established Republican values.
Gone are the basic Republican government tenets of thrift, personal responsibility, and limited government. Under the Trump administration, the national debt continues to grow larger and larger. The president will not accept any responsibility for his poor and incompetent leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. His threatened use of the military to quell constitutionally protected free speech during political demonstrations only amplifies how cynical and morally bankrupt the Trump Republican Party has become. What happened to limited government?
The list of reputable moderate Republican politicians and officials who are defecting from the Trump Republican Party orbit is growing longer every day.
Kindness and gentility are in short supply in the Trump Party. Those values are replaced with a vindictive approbation of unkindness that demonstrates a shallow lack of compassion on the part of the GOP and their president.
Unnecessary vulgar and crude comments emanate from the White House every day for no reason other than to create chaos, deflection, and division. It is only going to get worse.
An ill wind blows no good.
Please register and vote in the November election like your life depends on it. It may.
(Jim Baer lives in Concord.)