Against the Fall of Night: a review of American Carnage.
Copyright © 2019 by Tim Alberta
HarperCollins
“[Sarah Palin] was the early embodiment of some of the problems that would plague the party; mediocrity, anger, resentment, populism, proudly anti-intellectual, and increasingly bitter. And she was a rock star for it.” – Peter Wehner, veteran of three Republican administrations (Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush) in an interview with Tim Alberta
The intellectual and moral fall of the GOP didn’t start with Sarah Palin, of course. It could be argued that it began with Richard Nixon, with his pandering to the racists of the south and his personal moral shipwreck. It became informal party policy under Newt Gingrich, and the Supreme Court codified the disease with such decisions as Bush v Gore and Citizens United.
Tim Alberta, author of American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump knows full well that it didn’t begin with Caribou Barbie. She, like Trump, was a symptom, an opportunistic virus that would be harmless and ineffectual in a healthy and strong society, but who found a Petri dish in the Republican and right wing plutocratic pandering to racists, bigots, nativists, xenophobes, and religious fundamentalists. Normally on the fringes of society, this coalition formed “the base” of the Republican Party,
Wehrner views his recent party history through rose-colored lenses. “We went from glorifying excellence and achievement to embracing this anger and grievance and contempt.”
“Excellence and achievement” isn’t a phrase I associate with the hideously corrupt Reagan administration, the ineffectual Bush I group, or the incompetent, criminal, blundering Bush II administration. But compared to today, they were moral and mental giants, I agree.
With the Trump regime now in a state of rapid collapse, it’s not at all clear that the Republican Party, which went all in for him over the past three years, will survive. While widely loathed amongst Democrats and most independents for its duplicity and hypocrisy, Republican rank and file could, prior to Trump, self-identify as Republicans without having their intelligence, integrity, and even patriotism brought into question. The longer the GOP blindly complies with Trump’s racism and cruelty and autocratic ways, the greater the damage, and the less the probability of surviving.
Tim Alberta is writing about this Great Fall of a major political party in order to salvage the reputations of those Republicans who fought against the GOP’s largely self-inflicted political calamity. Some may be more deserving of exculpation than others.
For example, Paul Ryan. It could be argued that the libertarian Ryan’s cruelty and contempt for the working poor manifested in economic policies rather than in the utter vileness manifested by Trump, but Alberta gamely gives it a go, writing, “Ryan’s grimace gives him away. He knows the foundational tremors that have shaken Washington portend consequences farther reaching than any doubling of the standard deduction. Worse, try as he might to ignore his own agency in the poisoning of our body politic, Ryan knows he could have done more to supply antibodies.”
Well, yeah. He was basically driven out of office by rapidly growing public contempt for his inability to stand up to the depredations of Trump, and the vast increase in government spending and debt that his own addle-pated ‘supply side’ economics inflicted on the nation.
Alberta’s book is fascinating in that it details in inner workings and thinkings of the GOP leadership and top advisors with an effort not to be censorious or unfair. The problem, of course, is that at best Republicans at best will be seen as Neville Chamberlains who tragically misjudged the loathsomeness and opportunism of Trump, and at worst seen as Vichy enablers of a coup against America and for Russia. Ryan, of course, blames technology and “moral relativism”.
We live in historic times, and of course, historic times are deeply uncomfortable and often dangerous. When we get to the far side of this, if we do, Alberta’s book will stand as a historically valid narrative of what when wrong and how it went wrong.