RNC should reject the unconservative Trump, not kowtow to him (Feb. 7): There is far more reason for conservatives to disapprove of former President Donald Trump than just his divisiveness and lies about the 2020 election.

The Republican National Committee’s “censure” last week of conservative Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, coming the same day that former Vice President Mike Pence pronounced Trump “wrong” to suggest that the election should have been “overturned,” continues to make fealty to Trump and his “big lie” the single biggest fault line in today’s Republican Party.

Some of us, though, believe Trump has been a disaster for the Republican Party from the start, in terms of both politics and policy….

{We must weigh] Trump’s failures, bad choices, and outright harms. Begin here: Until Trump came along, the single most consistent element of American conservatism for 60 years had been the desire to limit government’s reach, size, and cost. From Buckley through Goldwater through Ford (yes, Ford), Reagan and Gingrich to the Tea Party movement and Ryan and former House Speaker John Boehner, conservatives worked to cut domestic spending and limit Washington’s power. Trump blew that out of the water. Even before the pandemic, Trump enthusiastically exceeded even Obama as the biggest spender in U.S. history , in both raw numbers and the size of debt compared to GDP.

Louisiana governor embroiled in police-shooting cover-up (Feb. 4): A growing police brutality controversy in Louisiana bears watching as Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards faces accusations of helping cover up the incident during his 2019 reelection campaign.

A thorough investigation is warranted but without demagoguery or any public unrest.

The incident occurred in May 2019, a full year before the Minneapolis murder of suspected counterfeiter George Floyd roiled the nation. After a black man named Ronald Greene, reportedly high on cocaine, tried to evade a highway arrest, state troopers dragged, beat, and choked him, and he died.

State police at first covered up the cause of death, claiming he died as a result of a car accident during the chase.

Just hours after the death, the state police chief texted Edwards to say a black motorist had died after “a violent, lengthy struggle,” to which Edwards replied, “Thank you.” Yet when police told Greene’s family the lie that the death resulted on impact from a crash and repeated the lie on reports, Edwards did nothing to correct the record…..

 

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