On March 24th, 1854 in an unadorned schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, a group of men came together to form a new political movement.  The impulse was provided by the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened two new territories to the possibility of slavery, allowing the settlers of both territories to determine through popular sovereignty the presence or absence of slavery in the territory.  This abrogated the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which permitted slavery in the Missouri territory to “balance” the entry of “free soil” Maine into the union, but contained any further slavery introduction below the 36th latitude. With the Kansas Nebraska Act, both Kansas and Nebraska fell above that line, and the future of slavery suddenly became a matter of who could get the greatest number of their supporters in place.  “Bleeding” Kansas resulted, with nasty violence growing rapidly into a low intensity civil war that predestined the massive carnage of the national civil war to come.  The nascent republicans in that schoolhouse recognized the country could not possibly survive the extension of a concept like slavery antithetical to the very foundational philosophy of an American union.  They determined to form a party that stood up for the concept of both personal and economic freedom, imbued in the slogan, “free labor, free land, free men.”  The party found its voice in the form of Abraham Lincoln, was forged through the ordeal of the Civil War, and became a dominant force in American politics.

The party has put forth great presidents like Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan.  It has matured into a firm conservative reflection of the American experiment, championing free enterprise, personal initiative, fiscal responsibility, muscular defense, and equal opportunity.

The current party should be at its zenith.  Having secured itself as the effective representative of the individual versus the collective state, it has achieved current electoral dominance at the state level with 3044 of 5411 state lower chamber representatives, 1,134 of 1,972 state upper chamber representatives, 31 of the 50 US governorships, 246 0f 435 US Representatives, and 54 of 100 US Senators. That last piece of political unity with the nation, the Presidency, occupied by a philosophically secure conservative, stood before the party in 2016 like never before, with a cratering government party stuck  defending its last political redoubt reliant upon an unrelatable candidate potentially fatally weakened by felonous behavior with America’s most secret information.  The Republican Party appeared  poised for an electoral renaissance that would finally implement a fundamental restoration of the principles of exceptionalism that brought America such bounty and morally secure standing in the world.

Yet..Its all about to go up in smoke.

In 2016, the national party has been infected by an insurgency that is bringing it to its knees and will fracture it forever if not eradicated. The insurgency is through the dark forces of demagoguery and nihilism in the human form of one Donald Trump.  All democracies are potentially susceptible to the charlatan who speaks to the population’s baser instincts of survival, envy, and revenge.  It is why the prescient founding fathers secured a constitution with checks and balances, separating powers to prevent such a demagogue from usurping power.  It is why they devised an electoral college to prevent the   unrestrained mob majority from securing the executive.  To many in today’s day and age, however, these olympian principles that have bound America’s diverse population into a workable whole are entirely trifling.  In a complicated world full of competing strains, many people who feel left behind  are looking to others to solve their problems, and are willing to trust them with unbounded power to do so. Trump has seen this before in the microcosm of his own life, using the concept of self importance to overwhelm any careful vetting of facts.  It has led to a veneer of uninterrupted success, when the facts suggest multiple bankruptcies, failed concepts, and at times outright fraud.  It was a sign of his shrewdness that he felt the timing was right to sell his pablum on a national stage.

One doesn’t have to travel very far back in time to see this developing trend in American political discourse,  of the so-called indispensable man.  President Barrack Obama has been a savant in this tactic, presenting himself initially as the everyman, appearing from nowhere to course serenely above the fray, seeing not a white America or a black America, only America.  Obama suggested he could achieve through his very persona a resetting of  the national attitude on race, stop the oceans from rising, heal the earth, restore America’s reputation for fairness through  constant apology and humility, and fundamentally change America from its moorings in personal risk, unfettered markets, and non-collective morality driven individuality.  He progressively overcame the restraints of compromise and coordination through a combination of bully pulpit and executive action that circumvented those constitutional restraints.  The IRS became a tool for surgical strikes against perceived enemies.  The EPA devised a regulatory vendetta against coal and oil to attempt to make the market for the products untenable.  Budgets became quaint relics of the past, so that burgeoning unvetted spending would annually move forward, with the only alternative government shutdown. On and On.

Now Donald Trump has risen from the muck and fashioned himself a better, more streamlined version of Obama. Threats to those who would oppose him are now direct and malevolent. Other countries will pay for our laxity and incoherence. Banks and insurance companies will lose decision making capacity in their businesses. No proposed solutions, just the assurance that things will be “so much better”, “waste fraud and abuse” will be eliminated, and enemies will be “destroyed”.  The executive can be trusted with the coalescence of power because he is so much smarter, more successful, and realistic than everyone else, and is the greatest deal maker that ever lived.

A tired citizenry is increasingly vulnerable to such balderdash.  Say it enough and the seepage into the national consciousness can become unavoidable.  The weak , ineffective governments of 1920 Italy and 1932 Germany were susceptible to the ubermensch argument, and the results were devastating.  It is no small coincidence that Trump quotes Mussolini:

Is America the sheep the Trump lion is about to devour?  Possibly not, but the Republican Party will not survive the Trumpian form of fascism.  The virus of an unprincipled demagogue is not compatible with the generation of conservatives that conceived the ideal of the modern mantle of limited government, individual rights, tax fairness, national security, and belief in the founding principles.  If Trump achieves the coup d’etat and runs the primary table, the vast segment of millions of identified republicans who wear this mantle as the definition of the patriotic American will leave the party in droves, rather than directly participate in the country’s deconstruction.  To the party establishment who have help create this unbounded frondeur, a word of warning.  This particular Pandora’s box can not be re-sealed.  The Republican Party will permanently fissure and will cease to exist as a national force.  So get a grip, America.  You still have time to come to your senses.

For millions of Americans ,there can be no ‘getting’ along with our own home grown Mussolini.