INDIANAPOLIS — Steve Goldsmith recently offered up some home truths.
The former Indianapolis mayor and 1996 Republican candidate for Indiana governor wrote a piece for The Washington Post, “A post-Trump Republican Party must offer compassion, not racial divisiveness.”
Because his target audience was his fellow Republicans, Goldsmith made some political arguments in the piece. He wrote — accurately, correctly — that the GOP has all but abandoned America’s cities. He also noted that, during the Donald Trump presidency, Republicans have found themselves almost chased out of America’s suburbs.
Given that cities and suburbs contain the bulk of the United States’ population — and that they are the fastest-growing parts of the country — Goldsmith argued that this was not a strategy for electoral success.
“If my fellow Republicans and I are to reclaim our legitimacy as a national party, we must move away from the vitriol aimed at cities and show to Americans in urban and suburban areas that we are once more capable of governing with inclusivity, realism and pragmatism,” Goldsmith wrote. “Those should be the hallmarks of a post-Trump Republican Party.”
Goldsmith’s real argument, though, wasn’t political.
It was moral.
He suggested that Republicans weren’t being rewarded at the ballot box because they don’t seem to care about people. And, if they don’t care about people, what are they doing in public service in the first place?
Amen, brother.
One of the maddening things about this era in American politics is the assumption by many rabid partisans that everyone sees the world in the same us-against-them, zero-sum, for-me-to-win-you-have-to-lose way that they do.
Almost every time I write about Donald Trump and his habit of using a meat cleaver when a bandage or an aspirin is called for, I hear from one or more of his devotees. They accuse me of hating Republicans.
Sometimes, if I sense that even the slightest bit of real air can get into the vacuum-packed ideological bubble in which they live, I send them pieces I’ve written complimenting Republicans such as the late Richard Lugar, the late Bill Hudnut, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, current Gov. Eric Holcomb, U.S. Sen. Todd Young and, yes, Steve Goldsmith.
I wrote those pieces because I admire and respect all those leaders, even though I often disagree with them.
I admire them, despite our disagreements, because I know that they wanted and want to solve, rather than exploit, problems. They cared and care about people — even those who didn’t vote for them and likely don’t agree with them.
I can’t say the same about President Trump or those who enable him.
One thing Goldsmith’s Washington Post piece makes clear is how far and how quickly the grand American debate has degenerated.
For most of our history, our arguments have been about how we should aid or care for the sick, the poor, the elderly or those disadvantaged in other ways by circumstance.
Not whether we should help.
Nor whether we should care.
One of the strangest phenomena of the Trump era has been the alacrity and eagerness with which lifelong Republicans have broken with this president. The Lincoln Project — which is spearheaded by the husband of the president’s spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway — eviscerates Trump in ads produced on an almost daily basis. Veterans of George W. Bush’s administration have formed a political action committee aimed at defeating the president.
Those committed Republicans aren’t doing what they’re doing because they love Democrat Joe Biden and agree with everything he stands for.
Not hardly.
They’re helping because, for the moment, they’ve decided they’ve got more in common with a guy they think is trying the wrong way to help people than they do with a guy who doesn’t care about helping people at all.
That may be an effective short-term response to the Trump debacle, but it’s not a long-term solution.
This country doesn’t work well without two functioning major parties, each offering different ways to solve the nation’s problems and serve the nation’s people while keeping each other honest. When one party abdicates that responsibility — as Trump’s GOP largely has — America drifts toward disaster.
That’s why I hope his fellow Republicans pay attention to what Steve Goldsmith wrote.
He gave them something valuable to chew on.
The truth.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. Send comments to [email protected].
