Memorial Day

Goodbye To All That...

Happy Memorial Day. Which is when I most think of all the sacrifices our citizen soldiers have made for us and our way of life over so many decades. I want to sit and ponder all that in deep gratitude, yet I cannot. There is no escape, no way I can find to wrench my mind away from the grim, dark and dire business of American politics right now.

I watch the Republican Party, which I happily served for so long, jerk and twist itself into a horror show caricature of what it once was.

Fundamental questions have appeared for some time now. Is one a Conservative, or a Republican? They used to be near synonymous. Not any more. And beyond that, the Trump era’s Big Nasty Fork in the Moral Road: is one a Patriot or a stooge?

Hey GOP electeds, in your heart you know the answer.

Just look at this “big beautiful bill” that was just frog-marched through the House. Deficit spending at a galactic level so irresponsible they very idea it would rocket any OG ‘80’s GOP Senator or Congressman (or President) directly into the stroke ward. It’s some mix; a bundle of cheap applause tax cuts the economy doesn’t need, a full-throated attempt to gift the future of the world automotive industry to China, a 600% tax increase on private charity foundations since any charity grant that doesn’t involve rescue the white victims of South Africa is apparently suspect, a related tax code war against elite colleges, a cash fine on those driving EVs… it’s just one cynical goon squad move after another.

Then there are the endless administrative horribles. Payola One, the Jumbo Jet-sized bribe from Qatar (egomania turns out to be the the biggest national security threat of all), the staff slaughter at the National Security Council, the Z-team cabinet led by the clown at DOD, the Lubyanka calendar girl DNI and the thug at the FBI, the big-eyed Jihad against Harvard and our leading Law Firms, the loutish treatment of allied leaders, a crypto-scam so bent and sleazy that even a President Madoff would be too ashamed to try it, family influence peddling on an unheard global scale, a bullyboy attitude toward the media, boundless contempt for the truth, an ICE leadership that appears to gleefully fill its collective dream journal with images of hobnail boots marching and smashing, and always, the 24/7, never-ending, barrage of just plain ALL CAPS RELENTLESS STUPIDITY.

Tariff madness, foreign friends now enemies, reckless DOGE zig-zags, and that Orwellian truth-smashing dim-bot chirping nonsense at us from behind the lectern in the White House press room.

If you know history and believe in the greatness of American democracy, you know those White House press room walls must long to bleed.

I watch all this and cannot help but to think about so many people I know and have known in the GOP for decades. A few brave ones have stood up. But so many more just shuffle along, knowing but complacent.

All I can think is, “You bastards. Do something.” The elected are the worst. I guess the cheap haircuts in the House and Senate barber shops make it all OK. I’m sure they all rationalize it; shivering at the idea that America would spiral into a dark abyss if good ol’ Congressman Gus Baggadonuts were to lose a primary and — gasp — not return to Congress.

How they can show up at their home district elementary schools on Flag Day and lead the kids in the Pledge of Allegiance without spasming into a vomit fit and passing out into a coma of self-hatred is beyond me. Maybe they just don’t show up there anymore.

I mean, no one is asking these jokers to land on Anzio beach. Just keep the oath they swore when they got that special bright green Member-only Congressional pin they so proudly wear in their lapel.

(Whoops: correction. The historic green Member of Congress pin is gone! The House Republicans just spent $40,000 of your tax dollars on new gold and navy pins because they suddenly decided didn’t like the color green. Seriously. The Capitol cops liked green because the color popped out on a dark suit’s lapel, making it easier for the security folks to ID Members of Congress in a crowd of people in case of a situation on the Hill. Stupid wins again.)

So courage? In the GOP? Stop laughing. I know I’m asking too much. We’ll leave the hard defending America work to all those kids pulled off farms and out of ghettos and everywhere in between who are handed a rifle and sent across an ocean to fight. God knows they are a lot better at it.

Thank them. They so deserve it.

This other bunch, no way.

I left the Republican Party today. Not easy for me. I’m a lifer; started young, joined the cause, fought the good fights, made General. Helped a lot of great people serve in office. And dragged the odd clunker across the finish line, because Bob Dole needed that vote.

I went on the Secretary of State website and changed my registration to “Decline to State” which is how we describe Independent voters here in California. (I had thought I was registered to CA’s tiny, conservative “Common Sense” party, but the machine said Republican which is what I had still considered myself, albeit an raving apostate one. So I re-registered as officially DTS.

It only took a few mouse clicks, but it was a huge step for me, after all those years. I feel like the Neil Armstrong of bitter disappointment. Now, the Trump despising stuff if nothing new for me; I’ve been entrenched there a long time. I always through he seemed quite gross during his initial ascent in the late ‘80’s. I’m from the midwest where a rich guy bragging about his gold toilets is clear short hand for “asshole.”

But it peaked for me back in ‘93 when I was campaign consultant for Gov. Christie Whitman in New Jersey. There was a long trail of sleazy ooze winding around Atlantic City and it didn’t take long to find the big Slug behind it. So I’ve been OG anti-Trump for a long time. And public about it without hesitation. But I’ve clung to my GOP identity (as the kids say).

No more.

I’m still a conservative. Rock-ribbed actually. That will not change. Lord, how I despise the loony Left. I’m even suspicious of “progressive” eyeglasses. But whatever these jokers are that running the GOP show now are, kowtowing to the Orange Embarrassment, I’m no part of that. I do have hope for a rebirth of the once great practical right wing of the Democratic Party; centrist, far more fiscally conservative and not hypnotized by group-ism, enslaved to public employee unions and and terrified by the Wokestapo of identity politics. Doers, not talkers. Who, unlike most of the current crowd running the Democratic Party, know how to win elections.

Give me gen2 Scoop Jacksons and JFKs, please! The county is hungry for it.

What I know I’m not is a populist. To me “populism” of both the Trump variety or the lefty Bernie/AOC school is dumb and tiresome. It’s a sugar pill for simpletons. Take an issue, the more complicated the better, and sledgehammer all nuance, complexity and fact-based reality out of it and then serve up a simplistic slogan or two — always with an easy cartoon enemy and a false promise easy-peasy solution at the center of it — and wait for the foot stomping and cheap applause. And these sad days, the avalanche of votes. It all seems so stupid and pandering and time-wasting and well, all too yahoo for me. It’s moron chow and I hate it. And it now own the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt. (And is coming up fast in the rear view mirror of the lost and wounded Democratic Party; just ask AOC.)

I think I used to be in the American majority: I respect brains and accomplishment, credentials and high SAT scores. I don’t hate Fauci. I respect the science labs at Pfizer and Moderna a million times more than the smack-fiend, bear-killing, creeper now running things over at HHS and his madman’s war against vaccination.

Foreign policy is what originally attracted me to the Republican cause. I went off to the Georgetown School of Foreign Service in 1980, studied Russian and got ready to fight the Soviets. I didn’t get arrested storming Congress, we young Republicans got into our cop trouble in front of the Russian embassy. But I look at Trump/Rubio foreign policy and I’m disgusted: I don’t think foreigners are our automatic enemies. I don’t think every international treaty and agreement is a zero-sum “deal” with a “smart” winner and an outwitted loser; geopolitics is not as simple as selling garish condos Mr. President.

(Sidebar re: all this “winning” and “losers” stuff: isn’t Trump really the biggest proven loser in American life? A discredited President, certainly destined to be seen as a unrivaled blight on American History? Nixon and Harding look like Washington and Lincoln by comparison. Think about it: he started with an inherited fortune he didn’t create, became a certified loser in business; six bankruptcies, ruined creditors, investors and partners, a horrible reputation and now a charade of success fooling only marks and built not upon commercial skill or talent but only building wealth the Putin way through epic corruption. All time con-man Hall of Famer? No doubt. He’s Zeus on that shabby Mount Olympus. But as a creator, a business man? I say no. And as a Man? Failed sham marriages, a rapists’ conscience, bone-spur cowardice and a psyche forever imprisoned on an ever-spinning gerbil wheel chasing his bottomless insecurities for the rest of his life? Deep down, I pity him.)

I do not believe the world is always trying to rip us off (Trump only sees diplomacy that way because he’s projecting his own grifter’s outlook on everybody else). I like Canada and Mexico. I’m with Zelinski. And I’ll smile when Trump’s pals Putin and Kim croak and beeline straight to Hell because while they are Donald’s fond friends, they are my enemies.

So Conservative always, Trumper never. For quite a while now the New GOP (TrOP?) has made being both impossible. I held on to the R label, I guess, out of hope and Irish sentimentality. The hope remains, but the sentimentality is gone.

I no longer believe it is possible for a traditional Burkean conservative to stay in the Republican Party because nothing now makes me want to “stand athwart history and yell stop” more than watching this guttersnipe crew of fools and grifters harm America and work so tirelessly against our national interest.

So I await the day when we can flush the Trump era of the GOP into history. Maybe I can come back one day, or perhaps we on the thinking right can create something conservative, thoughtful, better and new.

Trump’s demise will likely start after the 2026 House elections. For 40 years I’d feel a pain in my gut when Republicans lost Congressional races. I worked on a ton of them. It was my team, the Cause. Now, I can hardly wait. And the fact we have gotten to this point makes me very, very sad. So I’m looking to the future.

Hopefully we on the right can beat back the worst of this populist foolishness; it’s simply not how the grown-up governing business should be done. It will be hard to endure much longer as the world’s leading Superpower with relentlessly stupid domestic politics. We’ll get tired of winning? The truth is a century of losing is right around the corner if we all screw this up.

Damn, how I long for the good old-school fair political fight: smart, fact-based conservative new ideas policies on side, and smart fact-based liberal ideas and policies on the other. Battle like Hell, (with a dollop of trickery and skullduggery and Hell, politics, involved to make it interesting and fun) and then win or lose, regroup, make a compromise deal or two because you have to move the ball forward, then get ready fight again, harder and better, another day. See the other side as opponents you love, love, love to beat, but not, in the end, as enemies.

I thought about that a lot a few months ago. I was on stage with my old professional opponent, yet pal, James Carville. He had asked me to join him for a Q&A after a Santa Monica screening of his excellent documentary Winning is Everything Stupid. We were answering audience questions and suddenly, in that lightning bolt way he has, James turned to me with a knowing glint in his eye and said, “Damn Murphy. We sure had fun didn’t we?” I smiled, touched at the moment and moved by an instant flash of so many memories of the great political people I’ve known and the work we did and answered. “Hell yes we did.” James is right. It was fun. We had a great time. And nobody had to lead growling crowds in Lock Her Up! screams. A golden time, before American politics turned into Stalingrad,

I miss it.

I know it wasn’t perfect; Hell, I cut the odd corner myself. But it was far better than the funhouse mirror madness we are caught in today, where in Orwell’s phrase, “the best books… are those that tell you what you know already”. Not so long ago, Institutions counted, real facts and expertise carried power and weight and shame was a powerful deterrent in political life.

That for a very long and successful time was the way of American political life. A lot of brave people died protecting it. Remember them today, thank them, and know that we can, in time, get it all back. It’s our choice, and yours to make.

Photo by Chad Stembridge on Unsplash

Happy Memorial Day.

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