An open letter to the Tennessee GOP

Our new U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn is many things, but moderate is not one of them.

“She’s the Sarah Palin of Tennessee,” one friend said.

Without equivocation or reservation, Blackburn cast herself as Tennessee’s female Donald Trump — “a vote for Marsha is really a vote for me,” the president said — in a race against Phil Bredesen, perhaps the most moderate of all moderate candidates.

Tuesday evening, she won. Easily.

Wave a magic wand across Tuesday’s ballot and replace Bredesen with some of our state’s beloved moderates from long ago. Like Howard Baker. Or Estes Kefauver. Could Blackburn also have won against them? Or Bill Frist? Either of the Al Gores? I say yes.

Because moderation in this state is dying.

It’s not that she’s necessarily a good candidate so much as she’s a Trumpian candidate. That’s what helped her win, wasn’t it? Her special sauce?

I remember two short years ago, when many Republicans were embarrassed by Trump. Yes, they voted for him, but with reserve, with scruples. Mortified by his behavior, they compromised: We’ll look the other way if he gets things done. (And because he wasn’t a Clinton.)

Tuesday’s midterms, indeed a referendum on the president, proved such reservation has vanished in Tennessee.

Yes, you won politically in many ways.

But you’re losing something in the process.

For most of my life, conservatism at its core has represented two necessary and illuminating things: smalltown values and traditional Judeo-Christian virtues.

Republicans meant abstinence and a Just Say No firmness against a drunken pop culture. Republicans were William Bennett’s big book of virtues and Reagan’s everyone-can-help-someone ethics. Give me a flat tire on a dark road, and most nights, I’d always wager a Republican would stop first. Sure, I disagreed with Condi Rice or John McCain on issues, but I always admired them. They had character. (The Left had Bill Clinton.)

I grew older and moved to the Left, yet would every so often look Right, especially to outgoing senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, finding something firmer to lean up against when progressives went too far.

But now?

The GOP is offering nothing of moral value. You’re losing your soul. The party of virtue has become the party of a virtue-less Trump, whose look-at-me presidency is bigoted and spiritually bankrupt.

I understand the compromise you’re agreeing to. Yes, Trump is making things happen. Yes, he’s effective. So are termites.

By embracing Donald Trump, even if it means gaining strategic political victories, the GOP is sacrificing a cornerstone upon which it once stood.

You’re losing moral ground.

You’re losing the trust of people who once saw you as the very party that would shun a man like Trump.

“When he referred to his former alleged mistress as ‘Horseface,’ or separated migrant children from their parents, or rounded up migrant children in a desert prison camp, his supporters responded ‘Hell yeah!’ in sports bars and [God help us] evangelical churches across Trump country,” wrote Michael Gerson in the Washington Post. “They did this because Trump talks like them, and tells it like it is, and defies political correctness, and doesn’t take any crap from anyone — some of the most insipid justifications in the history of American populism.”

When I was a boy, the GOP brought Reagan to the UTC Arena; last Sunday, the GOP brought Trump. Inside the McKenzie Arena, I watched from near the top row. He told lies and demonized immigrants while local leaders fawned and the standing-ovation crowd cheered.

“Lock Her Up!” the crowd chanted. “Build That Wall!” Oh, you’re building a wall. Around yourselves. “By making the GOP the party of misogyny, anger and bigotry, Trump is systematically alienating large and growing portions of the electorate,” Gerson continued. “And when Republicans are left with a political coalition concentrated among aging, paunchy, male Caucasians … Trump will be long gone from politics. Like many narcissists, he will leave a trail of ruin behind him and care not one whit.”

I’m not writing this as a stranger. I know your stories and have listened long and hard to your reasons. I know and love many of you. Hell, I am many of you: middle class, white, Christian, with rural roots.

But what I saw Sunday evening at Trump’s rally was not the GOP I once knew and admired.

So I left.

I walked out.

I hope you will, too.