Trump Sounds the GOP's Death Knell: The End of the Old Republican Order

JD Vance, now the Republican candidate for vice president, is fully supportive of every aspect of Donald Trump’s cons and nakedly anti-American and pro-dictator policies...

A lot happened at the RNC yesterday, but the most telling moment predicting the future of America’s conservative movement and the GOP was when Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was soundly and loudly booed by the assembled delegates and participants, and then JD Vance was selected for VP.

It was the death knell of the old order, the Republican Party that has held a relatively consistent set of values since the 1880s, and the beginning of something entirely new.

Emphasizing this, Donald Trump picked Vance, a man who — like Trump — no longer embraces the traditional conservative values and policy positions of the GOP, as his vice president.

By ignoring what could be called the Nikki Haley/Mitt Romney/Ronald Reagan wing of the party in favor of this pugilistic heir to the politics of Joe McCarthy, Trump signaled he believes he’s now strong enough that he can ignore entirely the orthodox GOP and take both the party and our country down an authoritarian road we haven’t traveled since the days of John C. Calhoun’s Nullification Crisis.

I grew up in a traditional Republican household. My dad, who had a good union job in a tool-and-die shop, was an enthusiastic Eisenhower, Goldwater, and Reagan Republican and I well remember the values and policy positions that animated the GOP from that era until Trump’s hostile takeover in 2016:

— Traditional Republicans supported the American system of elections, encouraged voter registration drives (my mom volunteered as an election worker for decades), and were proud of their tradition — dating back to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War — of supporting the right of all American (men) to vote regardless of creed or color.

Trump and Vance, on the other hand, embrace Trump’s oily, disingenuous lies about the 2020 election being “stolen” from him, endorse purging Black and college-town voters from state rolls by the millions, and criminalizing voter registration efforts.

— Traditional Republicans supported an expansion of trade relations with other nations, arguing that the “principle of comparative advantage” would benefit consumers and that countries that trade with each other are less likely to go to war with each other.

Trump and Vance, on the other hand, want to put massive tariffs — paid for by American consumers — on imported products while embracing trade wars and xenophobic protectionism.

— Traditional Republicans supported — at least rhetorically — balanced budgets and fiscal sanity, historically arguing that taxes and expenditures should at least come close to balancing each other out.

Trump and Vance, on the other hand, were just fine with Donald Trump adding $8.4 trillion to the national debt, more than any other non-wartime president did in four years in the entire history of the United States.

— Traditional Republicans supported rights to privacy and personal autonomy. “Big government” that would insert itself into the private lives of citizens was anathema. They welcomed the gay Log Cabin Republicans.

Trump and Vance, on the other hand, support draconian bans on abortion and are pushing to end Americans’ rights to birth control, gay marriage, and the ability to check out and read the books you want from your local library. JD Vance says women in abusive relationships should not be allowed to get a divorce, and even children who are raped and impregnated should be forced at gunpoint to carry their pregnancy to term.

— Traditional Republicans helped build the American public school system and were proud that by the end of Eisenhower’s presidency it was the envy of the world.

Trump and Vance, on the other hand, want to subsidize private, for-profit and church schools for the upper-middle-class and rich people while ghettoizing the remaining public schools for poor and working-class people.

— Traditional Republicans endorsed the concept of America as a worldwide example of democracy (Reagan’s “shining city on the hill”) and “peace through strength.”

Trump and Vance cheer when Trump hangs his head and trashes the American military and intelligence agencies while humbly deferring to Vladimir Putin. They’re fine with him telling Russia and China they can “do whatever they want” to democratic nations and NATO members.

— Traditional Republicans supported nations’ rights to national sovereignty and joined WWII to push back against Germany’s seizure of independent European nations. My dad volunteered for WWII as soon as he graduated high school; traditional Republicans were eager to defend democracies and never would have thought of draft-dodging five times with purchased X-rays of somebody else’s bone spurs.

Trump and Vance cheer Donald Trump’s promise to turn Ukraine over to Russia, ending the war “in one day,” and want to abandon the rest of Europe to Putin’s tender mercies. The news story echoing around the world today is: “Both Trump and Vance want to give Ukraine to Putin.“

— Traditional Republicans defended America’s institutions of law enforcement; the FBI, in fact, has never had a Democrat at its helm in its entire history.

Trump and Vance supported congressional Republicans when they voted to defund the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies and booed Capitol Police officers when they showed up at the Pennsylvania statehouse. They defend January 6th traitors who attacked the Capitol police officers, putting over 140 of them in the hospital and killing three.

— Traditional Republicans demanded high moral standards from their presidents.

Vance has embraced a man who cheated on each of his three wives, who’s been credibly accused of rape by over 20 women (one 13 years old), and found to have actually raped E. Jean Carroll by a jury of his peers…twice. Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was legendary, he brags about being able to “grab them by the pussy” whenever he feels like it, and he publicly boasted about walking into the dressing rooms of teen and pre-teen girls when he owned that pageant.

— Traditional Republicans honored “law and order,” keeping your word, and integrity in business relations; they had nothing but disgust for con men, hustlers, and lawbreakers.

Vance is now enthusiastic about a man who paid $25 million to make whole people who’d been conned and ripped-off by his fake university, was fined hundreds of millions for business and tax fraud, who stole (along with his son Eric) from a children’s cancer charity, had six bankruptcies leaving creditors holding the bag for billions, and has been sued over 3000 times for refusing to pay his bills to small businesses, employees, and independent contractors.

— Traditional Republicans embraced the right of everybody to practice the religion of their upbringing or choice, and honored politicians who live their faith by church membership and behavior consistent with the teachings of Jesus and the prophets.

Trump and Vance are fine with the fact that Donald Trump has never attended church, brags that he has never done anything that would require him to ask God for forgiveness, and hangs out with religious hustlers who are most interested in getting subsidies and payments that Trump can facilitate from government.

— Traditional Republicans like Ronald Reagan supported rational gun control policies.

Trump and Vance are just fine with an America where the leading cause of childhood deaths is bullets. They embrace armed militias whose members often openly fantasize about killing their neighbors in a second Civil War.

— Traditional Republicans were environmentalists and wanted to protect wild spaces and species. Richard Nixon signed the Environmental Protection Agency into existence.

Trump and Vance are “drill, baby, drill” and say they don’t believe that the climate is changing, at least as long as the fossil fuel industry keeps pouring money into their nonprofits and campaigns.

John Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson for his vice president because he needed Texas; Trump doesn’t need Vance’s Ohio. Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman to balance his ticket both ideologically (Lieberman was far more conservative) and religiously; Trump and Vance are both “Christian” nationalists.

The only reason Trump picked Vance was because Vance will be a brutal enforcer for Trump’s most autocratic tendencies.

He’ll delight in ripping mothers from their babies like Trump did, in moving 11 million asylum seekers into concentration camps, and in stripping Americans of their rights under the Constitution in the face of Trump’s promised declarations of insurrection and emergency.

Traditional Republicans like my dad wouldn’t recognize today’s GOP. As Liz Cheney posted to X: “Vance has pledged he would do what Mike Pence wouldn’t – overturn an election and illegally seize power. The Trump GOP is no longer the party of Lincoln, Reagan or the Constitution.”

JD Vance, now the Republican candidate for vice president, is fully supportive of every aspect of Donald Trump’s cons and nakedly anti-American and pro-dictator policies. And he’s the favored candidate of most rightwing billionaires who’ve expressed a preference.

That should tell us — along with traditional  Republicans and independent swing voters — exactly what sort of future the two of them have in mind for us and for what remains of the GOP.