It’s always cause for celebration when someone from the conservative ranks sees the light and joins “the angry mob” snapping at President Trump’s heels.
And so today we raise a glass to Max Boot, a noted author, columnist and military historian who has not only bailed on the Republican Party but says that as currently constituted the party needs to be “burned to the ground.”
Max Boot
Boot, 49, announced his defection in a Washington Post column bearing Monday’s date and titled “The dark side of American conservatism has taken over.”
The column was adapted from Boot’s new book, “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right,” so I presume he made his decision before the Kavanaugh debacle.
Boot explained his decision to bolt in particularly searing language that laid out the case against the goofy, hateful brand of conservatism that seems to hold sway outside urban areas, college towns and the states of California and Massachusetts. (And, yes, I realize that means most residents of the vast majority of the American landscape have lost perspective, but, unfortunately, is the state of the nation.)
Boot says:
Upon closer examination, it’s obvious that the history of modern conservative is permeated with racism, extremism, conspiracy-mongering, isolationism and know-nothingism. I disagree with progressives who argue that these disfigurations define the totality of conservatism; conservatives have also espoused high-minded principles that I still believe in, and the bigotry on the right appeared to be ameliorating in recent decades. But there has always been a dark underside to conservatism that I chose for most of my life to ignore.
Clearly, the dark underside has subsumed the good parts. Boot traces the rise of Republican extremism partly to Barry Goldwater, who won only only six states in the 1964 presidential race against Lyndon Johnson. Despite the trouncing, Goldwater’s extremism took root with many people and is now “embedded in the DNA of the modern conservative movement,” according to Boot, who goes on to say…
In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites. As I now look back with the clarity of hindsight, I am convinced that coded racial appeals had at least as much, if not more, to do with the electoral success of the modern Republican Party than all of the domestic and foreign policy proposals crafted by well-intentioned analysts like me. This is what liberals have been saying for decades. I never believed them. Now I do, because Trump won by making the racist appeal, hitherto relatively subtle, obvious even to someone such as me who used to be in denial.
Extremism was ushered forward, Boot says, by Fox News, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and the tea party movement. The whipped cream on this perverse dessert, of course, is Donald Trump, who, Boot says, defines the Republican Party, “with his depiction of Democrats as America-hating, criminal-coddling traitors, his vilification of the press as the ‘enemy of the people,’ and his ugly invective against Mexicans and Muslims.”
In sum, according to Boot, “the extremism that many Republicans of goodwill had been trying to push to the fringe of their party is now its governing ideology.”
If and when the current Republican Party is “burned to the ground,” Boot says, moderates can start to rebuild a new center-right party from the ashes. But that, he says, “will require undoing the work of decades, not just of the past two years.”
…Thanks Max, I needed that.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Too little too late; decades of GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression have all but assured another generation of Trump and his minions. At which point…
And yet minority unemployment is at a record low, food stamp usage has dropped dramatically, the unemployment rate is now at 3.9%, progress is being made on the Korean peninsula, GDP is at 4.1% and the party just stood it’s ground on the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Trump has placed significant numbers of women and minorities into positions of great authority in his administration and quite frankly the party that Boot describes is foreign to me and I’m on the conservative side of the party (and I’ve never heard of this guy).
Contrast that with the hateful negative coverage of the Trump administration falling in the 80 – 90+% in most major dailies and establishment news organizations. Add in Maxine Waters inciting violence against members of the Trump administration, the physical assaults on Trump supporters, the shooting of several Congressional folk during their ball game by a deranged liberal, the totalitarian speech patterns that dominate most of our so-called institutions of higher learning and the loony tunes behaviour we just saw over now Justice Kavanaugh that outraged even Senate moderates like Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins.
No actual economist thinks 4.1% GDP per quarter is sustainable. Most of the gain was attributed by economists to companies stocking up on materials and exports of soybeans etc. prior to Trump’s tariffs taking effect, The various Fed Boards expect GDP to drop back to the 2.2 to 2.8% range again for the rest of this year and the first part of 2019.
Ford just announced last night they plan to start layoffs due to additional $1 billion the tariffs is costing them. This is likely just the start with most companies holding off until after Election Day to announce such changes. Also Bloomberg reports that Wall Street firms are starting to contribute and meet with the Democrats because of the worry of the relaxed Trump regulation is setting the stage for another financial crisis. And after the start of the year, the tariff tax will start to hit everyday America in the form of increased prices of many everyday items.
So I guess we’ll see which view works on Election Day. Another poll today shows today that the whole Kavanaugh issue has energized Democrats more than Republicans. And that the margin of folks wanting Democratic control of the House has continued to increase. The majority want a check on Trump which the Republican Congress has refused to do.
It appears it is going to be what many political analysts said a few months ago. Democrats retake the House (the question now is by what margin) and the Republicans hold or take a few seats in the Senate due to demographic makeup of the states with Senate races this year (older, whiter and redder). And polls are now showing a 30 point advantage on women supporting Democrats over Republicans as result of the Kavanaugh confirmation. Republicans expect this gap to diminish, but as was pointed out by one male analyst, all those thinking that the gap will diminish are guys and not women. This could be the continuing surprise and story of this and future elections.
I will find it fascinating to see what you have to say if two of the House districts in Kansas go Democratic. The Republican House campaign arm pulled their funding of Yoder about 2 weeks ago. That Yoder didn’t show up in Topeka this past weekend to be with Trump shows Trump is a negative in his district. The ongoing issues with the Republican candidate running against Paul Davis make the Democratic winning of both these seats a real possibility. And analysts have said if that happens, it’s going to be a long night for Republicans.
If you think Lindsey Graham is still a moderate, I have a bridge to sell you. He is running to the far right as quickly as possible to avoid being primaried in 2020 (which is still going happen anyway). I read one SC GOP type last week said Graham is one Trump tweet away from being done in SC. So Graham is going to do nothing to upset Trump and try to stay in his good graces.
And you can expect Susan Collins will retire when her term is up in 2020 rather than have to own her recent vote. It’s ironic she criticized an open fund raising campaign for raising money for her potential opponent in 2020 as bribery while staying absolutely mum on the dark money organization Judicial Watch spending nearly half a million dollars on an ad campaign thanking her for voting for Kavanaugh.