Erick Erickson has a generally accurate assessment of today’s political scene:
None of that shrillness has changed the results. The candidates get more corrupt, and their families get richer once they are in office. The debt keeps growing, the military keeps falling further behind, abortion and the abortion pill keep getting a pass from the party that calls itself pro-life, and our children keep learning less in school. Voters were told they had to trade character for power to stop the decline. Instead, the decision to hand power to moral cretins seems to have sped the decline up, and it is a decline voters keep being told they must choose — two roads to the same hell. Pardon me for thinking a growing number of them will simply opt out of choosing which path to hell they’ll walk.
The decline is not only a matter of character. Republicans are now embracing socialism. The Trump Administration has taken stakes in 30 companies, from Intel to a golden share in U.S. Steel. It has made tariffs a centerpiece of trade policy, which amounts to a backdoor tax increase on every American who buys anything. The President started a trade war with Canada for no good reason right before the midterms. Now the Trump Administration is using our tax dollars to run a recycled 2024 campaign ad for the President, with the disclaimer swapped out to note it is now paid for by you and me. After the 2012 loss, the GOP decided it needed to be an echo of the Democrats to win again, and Donald Trump shattered that narrative. In 2026, Donald Trump’s GOP has decided to be an echo of the Democrats on economics, and voters have consistently told Republicans that an echo can never beat the real thing. The GOP needs to offer voters a real alternative on the economy, not an echo. Pro-life socialism is still socialism.
We could certainly nitpick. I caught myself doing that. No, the Republicans are not embracing socialism. President Donald J. Trump, aka Grifter-in-Chief, is taking his chance to acquire, at no cost, shares in companies that’ll walk right out of the White House in his back pocket when he’s no longer the Grand Occupant.
No? It’ll happen, one way or another.
But, in general, American politics has attracted a plague of the morally dubious, and in too many cases the gatekeepers have been thrust from their posts, joining the rush or being taken in by the slogans. This is in no small part due to folks like Erickson, relentlessly beating the drum for extreme positions that betray a profound certainty and arrogance.
And while Erickson’s rant is to his credit, the simple fact of the matter is that he’s been a supporter of many of these Republicans for many years. Ye, he’s even cast forth the curse of TDS, or Trump Derangement Syndrome, at his adversaries. While the details may have been obscure, the entire toxic culture of the Republicans has been obvious for decades, as long-time readers of this blog are well aware.
The lust for position and influence can be a terrible thing.
I have no doubt the Democrats have much the same problems, although arrogance concerning your God and arrogance concerning your own cleverness and even wisdom are two different things. But the lack of humility really converges, I fear, in incompetent buffoons like Trump, Paxton, and the like.
And that’s worth keeping in mind in the years ahead.
