Party of One |
For much of modern American history, the Republican Party prided itself on being a coalition of competing conservative traditions. Fiscal hawks, national security hardliners, libertarians, evangelical conservatives and businessmen often disagreed sharply with one another while still operating within the same institutional framework. That internal diversity is now rapidly disappearing. The Republican Party is being reshaped into something more personal, more centralised and far less tolerant of dissent.
The defeat of Congressman Thomas Massie in Kentucky is not significant merely because another incumbent lost a primary. American politics has always been brutal towards internal rebels. What makes this moment different is the reason for the rebellion. Mr Massie was not accused of ideological betrayal in the conventional sense. He remained firmly conservative on most policy issues. His offence was independence itself. He questioned military adventurism abroad, criticised deficit-expanding spending bills and supported attempts to force greater transparency around the Jeffrey Epstein files.
In an earlier Republican era, such positions would have placed him within one faction of a broader conservative debate. In today’s Republican Party, they marked him as disloyal to........