'Danger to American democracy': Ex-Nancy Reagan speechwriter says GOP has been overtaken by 'abject lunacy'

Former Nancy Reagan speechwriter Mona Charen, now 63, has spent plenty of time bashing liberals and progressives. But Charen is a blistering critic of President Donald Trump, and she was glad to see former Vice President Joe Biden defeat him in the 2020 presidential election. Many Never Trumpers hoped that the Republican Party would throw Trump under the bus after his loss; instead, countless Republicans have rallied around him. And Charen, in an article published by The Bulwark on December 9, warns that the GOP has been taken over by extremists.

"There's a theory that people have rallied to Trump and alternative news sources because they feel disrespected by the mainstream, liberal-leaning press," Charen explains. "They bristle at the condescension of liberals who, they believe, despise country music, guns and Cracker Barrel. There is some truth in this, but my experience with conservatives makes me skeptical of that as a complete explanation."

Charen goes on to say that the "abject lunacy" she is observing in the post-election GOP of 2020 goes way beyond the usual conservative disdain for "coastal elites."

According to Charen, "The resentment motive can't account for our volume of crazy…. With an enormous turbo-charge from Trump, the conspiracists are in the driver's seat of the Republican Party. Today, the glazed-eyed Hillary-murdered-Vince-Foster Republicans are, if not the majority, at least a plurality of the Republican Party. This is profoundly worrying because, let's face it, they've suspended their critical faculties."

Biden enjoyed a decisive victory in the 2020 presidential election, winning 306 electoral votes and defeating Trump by over 7 million in the popular vote. Yet Trump supporters in the GOP have filed countless lawsuits in the hope of overturning the election results, baselessly claiming widespread voter fraud and insisting that Trump really won by the landslide.

"Trump spent months saying mail-in ballots were ripe for fraud," Charen observes. "He openly declared that he would not accept the legitimacy of any election he lost. He pressured friendly state legislatures, like Pennsylvania's, not to count mail ballots until Election Day so that he could weave a story of victory if he did well with in-person voting on Election Night, knowing that the count for mail ballots would take longer."

Charen notes that the Arizona Republican Party "is actually asking Republicans to 'fight and die' for Trump's stolen election lie" and that author/radio host Eric Metaxas has "released a video testament telling Trump, 'I'd be happy to die in this fight. This is a fight for everything. God is with us.'"

"Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is calling for a military coup," Charen observes. "One of the president's lawyers called for an official who oversaw election cybersecurity to be shot at dawn."

Charen wraps up her column on a pessimistic note, warning that the 2020 GOP is blatantly authoritarian.

"We have now reached the stage where it isn't just that Republicans fail to rebuke Trump," Charen laments. "It isn't just that Republicans are frightened into silence by fear of the base. We are now at the stage when a critical mass of the Republican Party has adopted Trump's disordered personality for its own. The Republican Party is, in this iteration, a danger to American democracy."