George Will leaves Republican Party. Is now "unaffiliated".

[Hayabusa Rider]

http://fortune.com/2018/06/22/george-will-leaves-republican-party-donald-trump/?xid=gn_editorspicks

He also said to vote Democrat come November. Will is hardcore conservative, but isn't doing the "Party of Trump".

He's not even a RINO now.

 

[Jhhnn]

He's not alone-

https://slate.com/news-and-politics...arty-calls-for-the-election-of-democrats.html

 

[Victorian Gray]

So he's leaving the party for the 2nd time? Did everyone ignore him when he left the 1st time?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

So he's leaving the party for the 2nd time? Did everyone ignore him when he left the 1st time?

Agreed, sadly nobody cares when they stop hating Democrats.

 

[Indus]

I really don't care, do you?

 

[nickqt]

George Will, an apologist for the 40+ year project to turn the Republican party into the out-and-proud right-wing authoritarians they are now, attempts to distance himself from what he helped create.

Great.

Expect more Republican apologists stopping just long enough to shed their uniforms, before running from their creation.

They can vote for the Democrats until they've rectified the throat stomping of the country they've encouraged, and then they can take the right-wing of the Democratic party and make it their own with the conservative Democrats. Progressives can take the left-wing of the party and continue attempting to drag the country into the 21st century.

The Republican party is trash.

 

[Jhhnn]

George Will, an apologist for the 40+ year project to turn the Republican party into the out-and-proud right-wing authoritarians they are now, attempts to distance himself from what he helped create.

Great.

Expect more Republican apologists stopping just long enough to shed their uniforms, before running from their creation.

They can vote for the Democrats until they've rectified the throat stomping of the country they've encouraged, and then they can take the right-wing of the Democratic party and make it their own with the conservative Democrats. Progressives can take the left-wing of the party and continue attempting to drag the country into the 21st century.

The Republican party is trash.

You're right in a way. I don't think Will has come to grips with the role he's played in turning the GOP base into drooling idiots.

He just sees what they've become & denounces it. It's a start in the right direction.

 

[Ken g6]

Republicans really should have pushed the tea party out to make their own party. But our non-ranked voting system makes third parties impractical.

Now real Republicans should start their own party. Maybe the Bull Moose party? But they still have the same problem, so now they're latching onto Democrats.

 

[Noah Abrams]

George Will, an apologist for the 40+ year project to turn the Republican party into the out-and-proud right-wing authoritarians they are now, attempts to distance himself from what he helped create.
.

You are quite wrong. He has been one of the few voices against authoritarianism in this country. I don’t always agree with him but he is always worth reading. Not least for his understated wit, something so rare in the screaming from rooftops culture of today

 

[Jhhnn]

Republicans really should have pushed the tea party out to make their own party. But our non-ranked voting system makes third parties impractical.

Now real Republicans should start their own party. Maybe the Bull Moose party? But they still have the same problem, so now they're latching onto Democrats.

They can't hold the Speakership in the HOR w/o the Teahadis, the Freedom Caucus. The Speaker controls the agenda.They're all into looting the Treasury for the Wealthy & cutting benefits for the needy. They're all "real" Republicans in that respect.

Right now they're trying to finish off the New Deal entirely, renounce all of the adjustments that controlled raw capitalism & created a broad middle class. We're already in a new Gilded age of sorts & they fully intend to drive it more in that direction.

 

[Lanyap]

I don't blame him.

Trump's political affiliation has switched between republican and democrat in the past to suck up to whoever is in charge at the time.

 

[Jhhnn]

I don't blame him.

Trump's political affiliation has switched between republican and democrat in the past to suck up to whoever is in charge at the time.

Yeh, and then the GOP sucked right up to Trump, craven invertebrates that they are.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

Republicans really should have pushed the tea party out to make their own party. But our non-ranked voting system makes third parties impractical.

Now real Republicans should start their own party. Maybe the Bull Moose party? But they still have the same problem, so now they're latching onto Democrats.

You mean "real Republicans" such as John McCain?

https://thefederalist.com/2018/06/2...cially-ruinous-investigations-of-non-profits/

 

[Jhhnn]

You mean "real Republicans" such as John McCain?

https://thefederalist.com/2018/06/2...cially-ruinous-investigations-of-non-profits/

McCain knows dependency on right wing billionaires is poison to the GOP, yes. He's kinda mavericky that way. Not a real Republican by today's standards. That was evident when they booed him at his concession speech in 2008.

 

[Noah Abrams]

Oh man, few can write as beautifully as Will does. Consider this from the recent piece, his trademark wit and writing style:

Consider the melancholy example of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), who wagered his dignity on the patently false proposition that it is possible to have sustained transactions with today’s president, this Vesuvius of mendacities, without being degraded. In Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons,” Thomas More, having angered Henry VIII, is on trial for his life. When Richard Rich, whom More had once mentored, commits perjury against More in exchange for the office of attorney general for Wales, More says: “Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . But for Wales!” Ryan traded his political soul for . . . a tax cut. He who formerly spoke truths about the accelerating crisis of the entitlement system lost everything in the service of a president pledged to preserve the unsustainable status quo.


Ryan and many other Republicans have become the president’s poodles, not because James Madison’s system has failed but because today’s abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it

 

[ivwshane]

I don't understand why more Republicans aren't doing this. Their party is dead and represents nothing they used to believe in.

 

[woolfe9998]

You're right in a way. I don't think Will has come to grips with the role he's played in turning the GOP base into drooling idiots.

He just sees what they've become & denounces it. It's a start in the right direction.

I've always thought of Will as being on the more moderate and somewhat less partisan wing of conservatism, but perhaps I'm incorrect. What role do you think he's played in radicalizing them? I mean, compared to people like, say Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, etc?

 

[theeedude]

Good for him. Of course the real problem is not Republican party or Trump, it's that conservatism doesn't work.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Good for him. Of course the real problem is not Republican party or Trump, it's that conservatism doesn't work.

What is conservatism and what doesn’t work about it?

 

[Vic]

I don't understand why more Republicans aren't doing this. Their party is dead and represents nothing they used to believe in.

Their party is not dead. It's in control of the country. And they haven't actually believed in any of those of things since 1964, if even then.

 

[Vic]

What is conservatism and what doesn’t work about it?

Conservatism is the philosophy of opposing changes in the social order (or of conserving the existing social order), and what doesn't work about it is that change is inevitable.

 

[ivwshane]

Their party is not dead. It's in control of the country. And they haven't actually believed in any of those of things since 1964, if even then.

The Republican party is definitely dead. Trump was the final nail in the coffin. The Republican party as we know it now, is a nationalist party.

I don't see normal, conservative Republicans retaking the party so my guess is that they'll form a new party and the Republican brand will die in a couple of years (or within a decade).

History is repeating itself.

 

[Moonbeam]

The Republican party is definitely dead. Trump was the final nail in the coffin. The Republican party as we know it now, is a nationalist party.

I don't see normal, conservative Republicans retaking the party so my guess is that they'll form a new party and the Republican brand will die in a couple of years (or within a decade).

History is repeating itself.

Um, how do I say this without initiating a competitive response. I probably can't so, oh well, I find more in Vic's post to ponder than I did in yours. Keep your point of view of you want but look at the subject from the perspective he suggests. Looking though the window his viewpoint opens, what do you see?

 

[ivwshane]

Um, how do I say this without initiating a competitive response. I probably can't so, oh well, I find more in Vic's post to ponder than I did in yours. Keep your point of view of you want but look at the subject from the perspective he suggests. Looking though the window his viewpoint opens, what do you see?

I don't see a party running on small government. I don't see a pro immigration party. I don't see a party running on fiscal conservatism. I don't see a party running on free trade. I don't see a party running on family values. I don't see a party running on being the world's police.

Whether or not they achieved those things in the past is immaterial to whether or not that's what their goals were.

 

[Noah Abrams]

Conservatism is the philosophy of opposing changes in the social order (or of conserving the existing social order), and what doesn't work about it is that change is inevitable.

That is a misunderstood concept of conservatism.

As for change, I have become more “conservative” over the years partly because of this zeal of many for change without fully realizing the broader context. They want to save the world but barely understand themselves