The NY Times quotes the valiant Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, who stood on the Senate floor in 1950 and defiantly, indignantly denounced McCarthyism:
"I doubt if the Republican Party could [ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny — fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear] simply because I don’t believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren’t that desperate for victory."
They were. Quite a few Democrats were just as hungry for victory, chasing communist phantoms in schoolrooms and workplaces with Republican zeal. But Sen. McCarthy was the GOP's man — if not, later, President Eisenhower's — thus his singular enthusiasm for fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear morphed into an eponymous movement, essentially staining the Republican Party alone.
By invoking Sen. Smith, the Times thrusts political nobility against political degeneration in the honorable task of summoning Republicans' better angels — who by now, however, are AWOL as well as deaf. Any thinking observer of contemporary politics would have to concede that straightforward, nonexistential fact.
The angels' flight was not sudden; its trajectory spanned 40 years, as Republicans surrendered fiscal responsibility to fiscal recklessness and voodooism, embraced the decidedly non-Whiggish concept of a "unitary executive," and have now collapsed before that face of infinite depravity, Donald J. Trump.
Pursuing its task of hopeless encouragement, the Times goes on to urge Republicans "to emulate the moral clarity of Margaret Chase Smith and recognize that they have a particular responsibility to condemn the president’s behavior and to reject his tactics."
That's a beautiful sentiment. It's also as worthless as a Trump promise. Republicans are indeed so desperate for political victory that they'll ride the four hateful horsemen of Trumpism to wherever they take them.
And, as we know, a massive swath of the American people will uphold a "political party that puts political exploitation above national interest," which Sen. Smith, in her more innocent era, in some ways, disbelieved deeply.
For the GOP, securing the national interest by vastly subordinating political exploitation is, for us, an impossible dream. We graciously note that not all Republican pols are inherently corrupt and just plain awful human beings. They must rely, though, on the hayseeds, Hayekians, haters and hellraisers who granted them the Washington air they breathe, the fawning staff that serves them, and the junkets they jump on.
Integrity, schmintegrity. Who could prevent one's addiction to such insidious political royalty? Nor can Republicans' base heal itself, for it's willfully trapped in the thundering ignorance and bigotry of far-right epistemic closure. Daily, its illiteracy in all things good and decent and honorable — and real — becomes more profoundly engrained.
Should any reality manage to spill into view, vampiric cries of "Fake news!" is their garlic. In darkness, they are safe once again.
I do not mock the Times for its conclusion that "the Constitution’s framers envisioned America’s political leaders as bound by a devotion to country above all else." I only remark that the antebellum fire-eaters of southern Democracy were also bound by devotion to country — their country, not the country, which is again the creed of Trumpism's hayseeds and hellraisers.