I wonder if there are any good Republicans or good Republican ideas.
My opinion of Jon Huntsman (once my standard for how far right you could go while remaining decent) has taken a nosedive, Evan McMullin is still in the “not sure if good or delusional” category, Justin Amash seems decent. I know a number of Republicans in my area who are really torn up about the rise of white supremacists in the Republican Party–like their family home has been taken over by squatters, and people keep asking them why they don’t just move out. Because it’s their house! But of course my take on this is that they were perfectly happy with the squatters in their house as long as they stayed in the basement out of sight. And now the metaphor has gone on too long.
Good Republican ideas: I was initially pretty skeptical of Obamacare, but it turns out to have worked well enough, so that’s one good Republican idea. I would have been much happier with Nixon’s healthcare plan, so that’s another one that didn’t make it. Nixon’s negative income tax (which was also never implemented) was an excellent social-science-research-backed welfare reform idea that would have made Bill Clinton’s welfare reform look like a Dickensian nightmare, and an expensive one at that. The EPA and OSHA were good Republican ideas. Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-trust enforcement was laudable.
On the non-policy side of things, I have a great deal of respect for Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was a Republican. And while I pretty much think of Goldwater as the epitome of the right-twice-a-day clock of libertarian Republicanism, I have to wholeheartedly endorse his statement: “Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”