On the issues: Rep. Ken Calvert and Will Rollins on Jan. 6, LGBTQ rights and polarization, and what the GOP and Democrats can learn from each other
Editor’s note: The following comment was submitted by Will Rollins, executive director of the Alliance for Traditionalist Americanism.
In an article called “The Next Ruling Class,” New York Times columnist Frank Bruni argued that the modern Republican Party was no longer conservative, and that its “new leaders have little in common with its traditional principles, and even less with its conservative principles.”
This is a fascinating argument, because it is true almost everywhere. The modern, Republican Party has become a political hybrid. It is a party that has always been a party; that has always sought to be a party as part of its quest for political dominance; but never has it been a party in the true sense.
Since President Trump was elected, that search for dominance has continued.
The Republican Party is now a party of social conservatism — defined as supporting a traditional Christian upbringing. Its party platform is now a set of “ten core beliefs” — the list of items that will define this party and the nation for the next four years, even after the next four years, if the GOP wins the White House.
What is happening is that we are witnessing the rise of a new political class.
It is also the end of a party that should have been the single-party political center of the free world for a century or more.
The parties that have dominated American politics until now — the Democrats and the Republicans, after the Democrats moved to the left in the 1920s — have been the parties of political extremism, not the parties of political moderation.
The new Republicans, or the new Republican Party, are the party of social conservatism, the party of the old Southern Democrats, of the old Liberal Republicans, the party of the Northern moderates and the party of the new right-wing, neo-NAACP wing of the party.
That party is winning, and