Jen Rubin no longer a conservative...

If you say you are a staunch defender of the rule of law, that you are devoted to ending systematic racism, that you are an advocate of legal immigration, that you believe in objective reality (including climate change science) and that you think illiberal regimes such as Russia are our greatest foreign threat, the party of Trump will lash out at you.

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They will accuse you of Trump derangement syndrome and dub you a “fake” conservative. Well, they have a point. Because conservatives no longer seem to champion any of those positions (or free trade or American international leadership or NATO), it is hard to say I fit in any longer.

So yes, conservatism is dead.

The Tea Party in 2010s tried to resurrect it. But all that the angry and bitter zombie Reaganites of the Tea Party ultimately accomplished was making conservatism look obstructionist — and, with the ascension of Donald Trump, they have turned into zombie Buchananites. To the extent that the mindless mush that is called “conservatism” today is in obedient lockstep with Donald Trump, it is nationalist, hateful, intolerant, and unpatriotic.

For now, the objective remains removal of Trump and obliteration of a party that has grievously betrayed democracy and abandoned simple decency and honesty. Whatever alternative to the toxic waste dump of the Trump GOP arises to replace it may be worth considering — but only if it embodies the most basic American creed (“We the people. . .”) and abandons veneration of authoritarianism.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/20

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