Read It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump for Free Online Page A

Republican overlords can convince us that these were just personal quirks of a “black swan” leader who kept us from the horror of…a former secretary of state, U.S. senator, and First Lady becoming president. To avoid the nightmare of having a president who had actually spent decades preparing for the job, it was necessary to nominate a reality-TV figure who talked openly of his desire to have sex with his own daughter and lectured Republican members of Congress on Article XII of the Constitution, which exists only in his mind. This positions Donald Trump as the Necessary Monster history demanded to save the Republican Party.
    Say that combination of amnesia, self-deceit, and desperation is possible, what remains is a simple question: What does a center-right party in America stand for? Once this was easy to answer: fiscal sanity, free trade, being strong on Russia, personal responsibility, the Constitution. Now? Can anyone honestly define what the Republican Party stands for beyond “owning the libs”? Whatever that means. Can any governing party exist as a credible force with no defined principles? Can a governing party exist when the supposed Wise Men and Women of that party trampled over every value in which they swore they believed, in a desperate attempt to flee from the need to defend their values? What institution of the center right stood firm against the disgraceful idiotocracy of the Trump years? One by one the supposed leaders of the party, in office, frantically shed their uniforms of principle to don the uniform of the new ruling power. A few held firm, but in a nation that claims to value heroism under battle, the Armies of the Right fled in terror from…a tweet. The stench of their fear hangs over our body politic like gangrene on a rotting limb. Perhaps these men and women deserve some of our pity for their pathos, but they have proven they deserve none of our respect. They had a sworn oath to defend the country and chose to defend Donald Trump, the most anti-American president in the country’s history.
    On a personal level, I feel a mix of sadness and disgust. Many of these men and women lied to me when I listened to them explain why they wanted to be elected, and I and others worked so hard to get them in office and keep them in power. For what? So they could disgrace themselves by breaking every principle they swore they so deeply believed in? I blame myself for believing them, for not detecting their weakness, for helping to put them in power so that they could lie not just to me and others personally but to the nation and the world. History is a strange and unpredictable creature, but seldom is cowardice showered in glory, and I find it difficult to believe that on their deathbeds, this generation of Republicans who abandoned their allegiance to country to swear a new oath to Donald Trump will not look back on this period of their lives with a mixture of shame, sadness, and regret. Many politicians prove they stand for not very much over the course of their careers, but these men and women have proven themselves unworthy of such a benign and bland reckoning with history. This generation went out and fought and bled for…Donald Trump. Each bent the knee and kissed the ring, and though like the courtiers of old among themselves they tried to convince each other they had maintained dignity and joked about the foibles of their king, they know in their hearts they have proven to be small men and women unworthy of the greatness of the country they were elected to defend.
    These are not evil people. Live next door to most of them, and they will be good neighbors who help out when they can, laugh at your jokes, cheer for sports teams you both love. This was my tribe. I did not think them perfect; no man may be a hero to his valet or political consultant. I never pretended to see even glimmers of greatness in most of them, but I did hold out for an assumption of decency. They have proven me wrong, and