Michael Gerson is a former speechwriter for George W. Bush who famously coined the phrase “axis of evil” for a national address Bush gave shortly after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. And while Gerson has never supported President Trump, he says recent developments in right-wing media have troubled him deeply.
In an opinion piece he wrote for the Washington Post, Gerson argues that recent conspiracy theories surrounding the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich–propagated most heavily by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News host Sean Hannity–proves that the modern Republican Party is in big trouble:
“How could conservative media figures not have felt — felt in their hearts and bones — the God-awful ickiness of it. How did the genes of generosity and simple humanity get turned off? Is this insensibility the risk of prolonged exposure to our radioactive political culture? If so, all of us should stand back a moment and tend to the health of our revulsion.”
Blame for this dark turn in the GOP can be placed on Trump himself, Gerson believes:
“The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased. The movement has been seized by a kind of discrediting madness, in which conspiracy delusions figure prominently. Institutions and individuals that once served an important ideological role, providing a balance to media bias, are discrediting themselves in crucial ways. With the blessings of a president, they have abandoned the normal constraints of reason and compassion. They have allowed political polarization to reach their hearts, and harden them. They have allowed polarization to dominate their minds, and empty them.”
Gerson concludes his editorial by chastising those on the right who want to try and make political capital from human suffering:
“Conspiracy theories often involve a kind of dehumanization,” Gerson wrote. “Human tragedy is made secondary — something to be exploited rather than mourned. The narrative of conspiracy takes precedence over the meaning of a life and the suffering of a family. A human being is made into an ideological prop and used on someone else’s stage. As the Rich family has attested, the pain inflicted is quite real.”
All of this begs the question: Could Donald Trump wind up destroying the GOP?
Featured Image Via WKBN
