https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/14/opinions/ronna-mcdaniel-tweet-is-the-death-of-the-gop-cupp-opinion/index.htmlWhen the great ideas are gone, or when the leader of the party has neither affection nor use for them, all that's left behind is rank demagoguery. When you can no longer elucidate the ideas, or when they are too damaging to openly acknowledge, all you can do is simply make threats, demand loyalty.
That's what the party chair did. Out loud. In plain sight.
Where Republicans once stood on principle -- even those principles that were unpopular with the taste arbiters in Hollywood, the media and the intellectual elite -- now we stand, it seems, on Trump and Trump alone.
Mike Lofgren, a former career Republican congressional staff member who served on the House and Senate budget committees, lamented earlier this year in The New York Times:
"Where did its principles go? What became of Ronald Reagan's 'party of ideas'? One by one, those ideas were tossed aside for expediency and power -- except the tax cut. A time traveler from the Reagan era would no longer recognize the Republican Party, but most Republican politicians feel no embarrassment supporting policies they once condemned."
