Rauch and Wehner: Republicans Got Us Into This Mess And They Have To Get Us Out Of It

I think I agree with most of this, including especially:

The most troubling — and from our point of view the most disappointing — development of the Trump era is not the president’s own election and subsequent behavior; it is the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party. The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency. It has allowed itself to be hijacked by a reality television star who is a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself. And it has embraced presidential conduct that, if engaged in by a Democrat, it would have been denounced as corrupt, incompetent and even treasonous.

In the long wake of Gingrich, the Pubs have shown themselves willing to play hardball to the point of warping the system and violating the norms necessary for its proper functioning. To my mind, this is the most destructive part of Gingrich's legacy, and I still believe that it could ultimately be the end of us, or contribute significantly thereto.


   OTOH, the Democrats can't control their left wing at the moment. And their left wing is unhinged, as it's demonstrated over and over. To gesture at the flagship recent case again: if you're willing to look at a man and not only say that he's a woman, but insist that he is, and even believe that he is...and to suggest that no one should be permitted to say or suggest or even believe that he isn't...and that to do so is the rough equivalent of racism or misogyny...you've arrived at Crazytown. It's the end of the road. If you can look right at x and rabidly insist that it's not x, you can't be let near the levers of power. Especially when you've proven that you're not merely willing but eager to make laws to force everyone else to do likewise. And that's just one (particularly egregious) case. And it's not even to mention pushing this insanity onto children, nor the inflicting of medical mistreatment on them in the service of it. (And, again, to state that which shouldn't have to be stated: sure, let's have an open discussion of transgender ideology. But that's not what has happened.)
   The logic of the left is to almost blindly push ever further left. The (sudden!) infliction of transgender ideology onto society, the preposterous and anti-liberal misuse of Title IX and gutting of due process at universities, and the increasingly voluble calls to curtail free speech are horrifying enough...but they're just what we know that the left is already pushing. We also face Rumsfeldian known unknowns--we know that the progressive left will push ever further toward the antiliberal left, and we know that it will push for antiliberal policies that we don't even know about yet. Trump's an erratic loon; I have no illusions about that. But the illiberal left is a group of people driven by a cultish ideology of directed lunacy--always driving in the same general direction. IMO even with someone sane--e.g. HRC, Obama, Kerry--at the head of the ticket, the Dems will be at least as dangerous as the Pubs so long as their crazy left remains powerful and mainstream Dems refuse to shut it down.
   And that's not even to address the socialism and TDS that have afflicted the left. Trump's bad--awful, in fact. But I'm almost--almost--more concerned about the collusion mania that's gripped the blue team. If there was collusion, I want it to out. But it seems that many on the left are still insisting that there was obviously collusion. But here's the fact: it was never obvious. It's even more obviously unobvious now. Though, of course, it might ultimately turn out to be real.
   So does Trump have to go? Yes. God yes. But so does the antiliberal left. Oh, yeah: and in politics, the fact that x has to go in no way entails that x will go... And when both sides absolutely have to go...what then?
   Well...at least the grown-ups are still nominally in charge of the blue team. Thank God for, e.g. Nancy Pelosi. There's something I never thought I'd hear myself say, even when I was a febrile Democrat.