When asked by Politico how he would describe the current president, Republican Senator Ben Sasse tellingly answered: "Current president." And that was that. When further asked to describe his own party — that is, what it stands for — Sasse's answer was more complex: "Question mark," and "I don't know." But again, that was that.
Sen. Sasse should get out more, or at the very least he should more often consult with his boss in the Senate. For Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a Reuters interview, had an answer for both above questions:
What the administration is doing, not only am I comfortable with it, but I think the vast majority of Republicans in Congress feel that this is a right-of-center presidency, which is what we had hoped. If you look at what the president is actually for, it strikes me as indistinguishable from what a President Jeb Bush or a President Marco Rubio would have been advocating.
Although not even low-energy Jeb or little Marco would have degraded U.S. foreign policy as the Donald has done, McConnell was correct that the latter has walked in lockstep with the GOP on domestic policy.
Both have set out to destroy health-insurance guarantees provided under Obamacare, and both are hailing the vast benefits of further fattening the rich through monstrous tax cuts (which dovetails with slashing health-insurance guarantees). And of course both envision the economic Elysium to come from deregulated American capitalism, which only makes sense; after all, it worked so well in the 1920s-Hooverian culmination.
What does the Republican Party stand for? Republican Ben Sasse says "I don't know." And yet his reputation as the party's lone truth-teller is reaching presidentially aspiring heights.
You get the point.