Before we start, check out the first installment of my new “When the Shit Hits the Fan” series over at Glibertarians.
Now then: Rand Paul, one of the few Imperial types I confess to liking just a little bit, recently had this to say. Excerpt:
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) soberly predicted Friday that the Republican Party will be destroyed and hemorrhage a third of its members if party leadership votes to convict President Donald Trump during a second impeachment trial.
During an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Paul described the second impeachment push against Trump as “crazy,” and further evidence of how the president’s opponents are “bitter.”
“I just don’t understand how they can be moving forward with this,” Paul said. “And look, I’m not just saying I’m for everything President Trump has done. I was for seating the electors because I think Congress shouldn’t overturn the state electors. But at the same time, the thing they are doing is an overreaction, and if they think they’re going to have a positive feeling from the public when they’re going to go through a partisan impeachment again, I think that’s absolutely insane and wrongheaded.”
And:
“Look, I didn’t agree with the fight that happened last week, and I voted against overturning the election, but at the same time, the impeachment is a wrongheaded, partisan notion, [and] if Republicans go along with it, it’ll destroy the party,” Paul said.
“A third of the Republicans will leave the party,” Paul continued. “This isn’t about whether it was a right or wrong debate. This isn’t about anymore … the Electoral College, it’s about the future of the party, and whether you’re going to ostracize and excommunicate President Trump from the party. Well, guess what? Millions of his fans will leave as well.”
He’s right.
Look, I’m no huge fan of the modern GOP. As a staunch minarchist libertarian, I see both major parties as two sides of the same statist coin; they both want to confiscate a portion of my production by force and tell me what to do, just in different areas. But as an alternative to the Democrats, the GOP is far and away the lesser of two evils – still evil, but more tolerable. And they way our system is set up, third parties have, historically, never amounted to a hill of beans. So, far more often than not, I end up voting Republican, and wishing Barry Goldwater were still around. That’s the reality of the world we’re forced to live in.
Rand Paul is probably the closest thing we have to Barry Goldwater right now. He’s actually at least paying lip service to the idea of reducing the size and scope of the Imperial government, which, to be fair, Trump never did. But he’s correct that efforts by the GOP to unperson Donald Trump would result in a badly fractured GOP, unable to maintain a national presence for perhaps a generation.
Like it or not, Donald Trump has had and still has an enormous impact on Republican voters. Somewhere between a third and a half of the national Republican and other right-of-center voters will bail if the GOP stabs Trump in the back. I would normally hope that they wouldn’t be that stupid, but I wouldn’t put any level of stupidity past these people right now.
And this may very well happen. Because, honestly, it’s been a long damn time since elected office attracted the best and the brightest; if you want proof of that, just look at the two dimwitted C-listers that are going to be inaugurated tomorrow.
