During the 1950s, Republicans were the party that promoted labor unions, Social Security, and a top 91% income tax bracket and 70% estate tax on the morbidly rich. Dwight Eisenhower successfully campaigned on what we’d call a progressive agenda for re-election in 1956.

During the Reagan years, Republicans embraced Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism with its free trade, opposition to unions, ending free college, and tax cuts for the fat cats. They called themselves “the party of new ideas.” They may have done more harm than good, but for most Republicans it was a good-faith effort.

Today, they’ve pretty much given up on all of that. All they have left is cruelty.

When Governor Tim Walz gave his heartwarming acceptance speech Wednesday night here at the DNC in Chicago, his son Gus was caught on camera proudly proclaiming, through tear-streaked eyes, “That’s my dad!”

The response from Trumpy Republicans was immediate: Ann Coulter wrote, “Talk about weird.” Rightwing hate jock Jay Weber posted, “Meet my son, Gus. He’s a blubbering bitch boy. His mother and I are very proud.” Trumpy podcaster Mike Crispi ridiculed Walz’s “stupid crying son,” adding, “You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats.” Another well-known podcaster on the right, Alec Lace, said, “Get that kid a tampon already.”

Compassion for a learning-disabled child is dead on the right: all they have left is cruelty.

Ronald Reagan helped shepherd through Congress the most consequential border bill in American history, and when it needed updating Oklahoma’s Republican Senator James Lankford worked with Democrats to update it in a meaningful way. Trump demanded Republicans kill the legislation, invoking the memory of his tearing over 5,500 babies away from their mothers and trafficking them into fly-by-night “adoption” schemes (around 1000 are still missing) and his demand that the border patrol shoot immigrants in the legs.

Trump’s acolytes in Congress don’t even pretend any more to have a border policy: all they have left is cruelty.

President George HW Bush worked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to unwind the USSR in the hope of creating a democratic Russia. Neither expected Vladimir Putin to turn that nation into a virtual concentration camp where gays are routinely murdered, child pornography is legal (and they’ve kidnapped over 700,000 Ukrainian children), and dissenters are tortured, poisoned, and sent to brutal Siberian gulags. Donald Trump celebrates Putin, calling his invasion of Ukraine “genius” and “savvy,” handing Putin’s ambassador a western spy and top-secret information in his first month in office, and trying to abandon America’s traditional role as a moral leader in the world.

Trump’s GOP has abandoned our founding principles: all they have left is cruelty.

During the 2020 election, Trump followers tried to run a Biden/Harris campaign bus off the road in Texas, threatening to........

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