Has the Republican Party passed the point of no return?

As mentioned previously, it is going to be very difficult to confront—let alone stop—gun violence and domestic terrorism when you have right-wing politicians and commentators with a warped sense of “logic” in full denial mode. Take for instance Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who on Tuesday told those millions of viewers consumed with racial animus exactly what they wanted to hear: that the existence of white supremacists in this country is a “hoax,” assuring his fans that they should not feel “guilty” about harboring what most would call racist attitudes in spite of what happened in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend. 

But more obviously Carlson was defending himself against his own daily racist screeds, and this of course points to the problem of the failure of a great many people in this country—and not just those on the right, but any paranoid person who sees, say, a Hispanic male walking by and suddenly wondering if they had remembered to lock their car door—to engage in self-examination or even empathy after a clearly racially-motivated massacre as occurred in El Paso. They’d rather engage in what John Oliver called the “whataboutism” syndrome, in which the “sufferer” would rather point to someone else rather than answer for their own doings. According to Socrates (as told by Plato) “The unexamined life is not worth living,” for if “I know one thing, that is that I know nothing.” Incorrigible bigots like Carlson think they have all the “answers,” when in fact they have none worth expressing in a society that calls itself “civilized.” 

It didn’t have to be this way. The Republican Party that Sen. Robert Dole described in his 1996 presidential nomination acceptance speech today sounds completely unrecognizable:

And to those who believe that I live and breathe compromise, I say that in politics honorable compromise is no sin. It is what protects us from absolutism and intolerance.

The Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents -- The Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents many streams of opinion and many points of view. 

But if there's anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you, tonight this hall belongs to the Party of Lincoln. And the exits which are clearly marked are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.

Yet even then Dole’s vision of the Republican Party was crumbling into dust; the 1994 midterm elections saw  Newt Gingrich’s strategy of hyper-partisanship to motivate people with far-right extremist views to vote — with the prime target that year, “strangely” enough, the Clinton healthcare reform bill—succeed beyond the wildest of dreams, and Republicans would control both houses of Congress for the next 12 years; the Clintons actually “worked” with the far-right radicals in Congress to pass various “reform” bills that would lead to consequences antithetical to Democratic principles, something that perhaps some voters would recall in 2016. 

George Conway, despite being the husband of Trump’s “counselor,” has been a frequent and eloquent critic of Trump. In a recent op-ed he laid bare Republican hypocrisy and refusal to confront the radicalism that has taken control of their party:  “What’s just as bad, though, is the virtual silence from Republican leaders and officeholders. They’re silent not because they agree with Trump. Surely they know better. They’re silent because, knowing that he’s incorrigible, they have inured themselves to his wild statements; because, knowing that he’s a fool, they don’t really take his words seriously and pretend that others shouldn’t, either; because, knowing how damaging Trump’s words are, the Republicans don’t want to give succor to their political enemies; because, knowing how vindictive, stubborn and obtusely self-destructive Trump is, they fear his wrath.” For evidence of this you only have to look at the 180 degree turn that Sen. Lindsey Graham  has taken to completely undermine his credibility when—finding that “moderation” and “compromise” did not work because of Trump’s adherence to the demands of extremists—he did the next “natural” thing: he joined the “party.” 

I would, however, disagree with Conway on one thing; the Republican Party had been moving toward this result for 25 years if not even longer, back to the so-called "Southern Strategy" that gave succor to white voters who felt "threatened" by the passage of civil rights laws; now that the “base” has become energized by the rhetoric of hate, there is no real reason to believe that this is an “aberration.”