The Bulwark: To Save Democracy, Principled Conservatives Must Ally with Democrats

I totally endorse this move.

We need all the virtue signaling, cosmopolitan, modernist, suburban neoliberals and neocons in one party. For the last 50 years, they have controlled both parties which has had the effect of degenerating our culture and redistributing wealth upward to themselves.

The Bulwark:

“Appalled by the GOP’s comprehensive degradation, a serious group of prominent ex-Republicans and conservative critics of Trumpism hope to form a third force.

Their goal, Reuters reported last week, is to advance “‘principled conservatism,’ including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law”—either by forming a new party, or a faction aimed at redirecting the GOP. Writes the estimable Peter Wehner, Republicans must “work toward a policy agenda to meet the challenges of the modern world” and “change the way their party thinks about itself.”

Sadly the GOP is no longer what Daniel Patrick Moynihan once labeled a party of ideas. Today it is a party of atavistic tribalism rooted in perpetuating minority rule. The indispensable prerequisite for reanimating principled conservatism is helping Democrats reanimate democracy by destroying the Republican party’s ability to destroy it. …

Until then, I respectfully submit, it would be misbegotten to divert likeminded voters in the quixotic tasks of seeking to transform the GOP or forming a third party—either of which would bleed votes from the only current bulwark of democracy: the Democrats. The stakes are way bigger than abortion or the deficit, as important as those matters may ultimately be.

But we Democrats, too, must do our part—as Tom Nichols advises, “to become a large, coalitional, governing party” and “convince the commissars among you to let go of purity testing each other (and the rest of us).”

Conversely, we need all the populists who hate the neoliberal status quo for whatever reason and want real systemic change in our cultural and economic order in the other party.