Conservatives appalled by the 'crazy' were too silent for too long. Now, it's too late
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
Where were you when we needed you?
That’s my blanket response to a persistent trickle of emails from readers who keep asking me to, in effect, stop using the word “conservative” when I mean “crazy.” “Or “fascist.” Or “mean.” Which is to say that these people, most of whom would consider themselves conservative, want me to stop using that word to describe the likes of Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ginni Thomas and other luminaries of the political right..
While “conservative” is, in fact, the descriptor self-chosen by Trump and his acolytes, these readers argue that those folks are anything but adherents to the ideas of small government, muscular foreign policy and minimum regulation by which conservatism has traditionally been defined. Rather, they are extremists who have essentially hijacked the word and bent it to their own uses. The readers are correct, as far as it goes.
There’s nothing traditionally “conservative” about scheming to overturn an election as Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence, has done. Or undermining an election as Georgia Rep. Greene has done. Or inciting an insurrection as Trump infamously did. Indeed, it’s no stretch to believe that architects of traditional conservatism like Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley would regard their ideological namesakes with contempt.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/conservatives-appalled-crazy-were-too-145737125.html
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