Hello, students, gather round for story time. Tonight, it's the tragedy of "The Betrayal of Bob The Conservative." We have Bob with us tonight. Say hello, Bob.
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I said, say hello, Bob.
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Never mind, Bob's a bit shy. We begin our story in an age long ago, the early 1970s. Ask your grandparents what it was like, kids. In this strange and backward time, a new force was emerging in the American government - a coalition of conservatives, of which Bob was a proud follower.
Bob held no office himself. He was a simple man who wanted a simple, conservative government. He hated the Democratic party of the 60s and the chaos surrounding it. Kennedy was a womanizer, and his follow-up, Johnson, had gotten us even further embroiled in an unwinnable, unpopular war in a foreign country. Good thing this sequence of events never happened again in America. Anyway, Bob wanted his politicians to have Christian, moral integrity. He believed in the nuclear family and marriage, and hated divorce and abortion. He was a little afraid of communism, but to be fair, so was everyone else. That's all he really wanted. Isn't that right, Bob?
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Bob?
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Forget it. As I was saying, Bob found allies in the Republican party, who promised to be good conservatives: they'd be strong Christians, keep America moral and pure, and make sure the damn commies didn't invade. "I guess I'm a Republican now," thought Bob. The Republican party, or GOP, wasn't exactly perfect, but Bob held his tongue. After all, nobody's perfect. He also thought that for whatever faults the GOP held, the Democrats were worse. What could Bob do? If he wanted a conservative government, it looked like the GOP was the only way.
And then Nixon got impeached. Bob was torn. Here was his party, the party of integrity, breaking into the Watergate Hotel in order to spy on the Democrats. Bob could not in good conscience support that behavior, and to his credit he didn't. But though the Republicans couldn't live up to their own standards of integrity, that didn't mean the standards themselves were wrong. And besides, the Democrats were worse. So he held his tongue. "I won't support Nixon," though Bob, "but I still have to support the GOP. They still stand for morality, family, and American capitalism." He told himself that if he just didn't vote for the bad Republicans everything would be fine.
For a while he was right. Fast forward to the 80s, when Bob voted Ronald Reagan into office. Reagan was the perfect conservative: he strongly supported Christian ethics and behaved himself while in office, and he had a controversial, yet successful, economic plan to boot! Bob never personally received the effects of that economic success, but it was enough for Bob to know that some American businesses were doing very well. The point is that Reagan had integrity! Reagan denounced the KKK and demanded Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
We all miss Reagan, don't we Bob?
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Bob?
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Listen, Bob, we invited you here specifically to talk about you. It doesn't help us if you don't say anything. I swear, only when you need the conservatives to speak up they suddenly get all hush-hush.
Back to the 80s - the Republican party had always been an ally with the religious right, but what was just an alliance was morphing into a merger. This made Bob uncomfortable, because his religion was specifically for the poor and oppressed, a class which he imagined himself in because he lived in a rural area and paid too much in taxes. Bob knew Jesus Christ as someone who spoke out against religious institutions which had overstepped their bounds. Yet, for the moment, the religious right appeared to be using their power only for good, so Bob held his tongue. After all, the Democrats were worse. And if he wanted to see good, strong family men and women in office, good morals, and a stronger America, the GOP was the party for him.
Then Clinton got elected (the wrong Clinton if I'm being frank). Supposedly he did a lot of good things or something but let's not kid ourselves. The only thing we remember him for now is for having an inappropriate relationship with an intern. Naturally the Republicans threw a fit. Bob was just as incensed. "How could someone who represented our country behave that way in office?" he thought to himself. "That man sets a horrible example for integrity, family, and America as a whole." Bob cheered as the religious right banded together to take him down. Of course, many of Clinton's enemies were similarly sexually deviant, but Bob ignored that. Nobody's perfect, so it's natural that members of the religious right couldn't live up to their own standards. It was the principle of the thing. Still, Bob was uneasy.
Things seemed to go better in the early 2000s. America once again had a nice, good-old-boy conservative in the White House. Mostly. The Iraq War, which had started out popular, was turning into a Vietnam-like disaster with no solution in sight. The economic policies inspired by Reaganomics weren't showing good results. It looked like only big businesses were profiting and not the American people. Europe was ahead of us in education and healthcare. Europe. Bob wondered if Bush was so dedicated to traditional conservatism that he couldn't adapt to the changing times. But he held his tongue. He had to. After all, the Republicans were still the only ones fighting for America, for morality, for marriage, for family, for common sense.
In 2008, Bob proudly voted for McCain, but when Obama won (by a lot), he nevertheless held his head high. You win some, you lose some. Obama seemed like a nice but naive type of politican, and Bob was pleasantly surprised that this new president behaved himself well. He had to admit that Obama was a perfect role model: faithful and charitable to his wife, generous to his kids, and an extremely capable speaker. It had been a while since the president didn't sound like a good-old-boy (like 50 years tbh). So imagine his surprise when the Tea Party showed up.
Bob had always known there were a bunch of racists in the Republican party. They came as a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. You could never really get rid of them, but he liked to think they were a fringe group that had little to no control over day-to-day decisions in the party. That was... not true. Though the Tea Party began as a reaction to the status quo Bush years, with the inauguration of Obama, they donned the white cloaks and hoods. Bob wasn't a huge fan of Obama himself, but he thought these new Republicans were way out of line. After all, Obama set a very good example for everything on Bob's Conservative Checklist: good for marriage, good for family, not a communist. What could possibly prompt such radical hatred?
"But he's pro-abortion!" screamed the GOP. Bob didn't like abortion either, but he saw that abortions were actually reduced with the more education and access women had. The abortion rate continued to decline during Obama's presidency.
"But he's pro-gay-marriage!" shouted the GOP. Now Bob was confused. He'd never really cared about gays, and couldn't see how gays getting married in any way destroyed the idea of marriage he upheld. All the members of the religious right who had fought Clinton were now embroiled in sex scandals, so it was somewhat hypocritical to call for the sanctity of marriage in that context.
"But he's pro-illegal-immigration!" yelled the GOP, frothing at the mouth. Bob got angry now. Was anyone seriously advocating against border security and for illegal immigration? Come on. Only a few short years ago, it seemed both parties were intent on providing paths to citizenship for illegal immigrants, but the minute Obama because president that changed.
"But he's a Muslim!" the GOP gasped as Bob facepalmed. Obama was a shitty Muslim if he kept going to Christian churches on Sunday.
"But he wasn't born in America!" huffed the GOP while Bob considered sticking a fork into an electrical socket to end the suffering.
How could the GOP have devolved so rapidly? Bob didn't want to believe it at first, but there was no denying: the Republicans were branded not by their commitment to conservatism, but merely by hateful and vocal opposition to Obama. So in 2016, the Republicans ran Donald Trump for president, and in a surprise twist that will baffle historians for generations, the bastard won. Trump was everything Bob stood against - Trump cheated on his wives (multiple), got divorced, was pro-partial-birth abortion, cheated investors and workers, engaged in racist behavior, made lewd remarks about sexually abusing women, called for police brutality, and made a mockery of disabled people, am I missing anything?
Bob didn't know what to do. He felt he had never changed since that day in the 70s when he declared himself a conservative. But he was clearly nothing like the party that claimed to represent him. Could he even call himself conservative? What did that mean anymore? He wanted politicians to show integrity, but Republicans were voting to remove citizens rights and health care. He wanted politicians to behave according to good sexual mores, but Republicans everywhere were being caught in sex scandals. He wanted politicans to strengthen America economically, but they were busy looting it and fracturing old alliances. The GOP did not have an ounce of conservatism left in it. So who was the real conservative: Bob, or the GOP?
Extra credit: on what date did the Republican Party and Bob The Conservative part ways ideologically? Answer in the space below.