The Republican Party gathering in Cleveland is far removed from its ancestors, a party led by Eastern patricians, corporate executives, and rock-ribbed Midwestern conservatives. The primary electorate, often called the “party faithful,” is faithful no more. The convention in Cleveland reflects these deep-seated changes.

The apostates sent a clear message to their erstwhile leaders in the primaries. They rejected all the establishment candidates, just as they had rejected John Boehner’s wobbly House leadership and his heir-apparent, Eric Cantor, who was defeated in the party primary in 2014. Jeb Bush, the very emblem of a creaky Republican establishment, barely made it past the first states. He captured the donor class, but this isn’t the stock market. They don’t control the voting shares.

For years, rank-and-file Republicans had been sending the same message, and their leaders have refused to listen. This year, the voters pounded their fists and said, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Their message: The GOP’s elected leaders had failed in their core obligations. They had been elected to staunch the progressive tide of Washington centralization, Big Government legislation, and endless regulation by faceless bureaucrats.

They had not just failed. They had hardly tried. When big bureaucracies broke the laws or botched their responsibilities, they escaped the consequences. That was true for the Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Government Services Administration, and many others. After some theatrical congressional hearings, there were few punishments, fewer firings, and no budget reductions—this by a Republican Congress. The predictable result is a bloated, unaccountable, incompetent government slipping away from its constitutional moorings.

Instead of pushing back and articulating a strong counter-agenda, the Republican Party became part of the problem. Its main goals were to slow the rising tide of regulation, seek some marginal changes, and pass special carve-outs for its big corporate donors. When they and their aides leave Congress, they become lobbyists. Where did that leave ordinary voters? Angry.

If the results of “Washington Knows Best” government had left ordinary Americans better off—richer, safer, and more confident of their families’ future—then voters in both parties would have muddled along, grumbling.

But the results have been lousy. Real incomes are falling, inequality rising. Police are under attack, from Baltimore to Dallas to Baton Rouge. Sections of inner cities are free-fire zones. Poor families are crumbling, whether they are black, white, or Latino. It’s hard to argue that Washington is producing good outcomes domestically.

Or internationally. The Middle East is a giant civil war. Russia is challenging a feckless America and its NATO allies. Iran is disregarding its high-profile agreements by seeking prohibited weapons and technology. It is using its cash windfall, freed up by the Obama administration, to fund regional wars. China is asserting military control over the sea lanes America once commanded. After George Bush’s foreign adventures and Barack Obama’s weary retreat, the world has become significantly more dangerous.

All this bad news cast the “Washington Knows Best” attitude as a kind of arrogance bordering on the delusional. That’s why the insiders lost in the Republican primaries and why the consummate insider, Hillary Clinton, struggled in the Democratic primaries against an improbable and unexciting outsider.

America’s Shaky Rule of Law



Even America’s basic rule of law is now in doubt. That fundamental constitutional notion rests on three pillars:

Laws are passed democratically;

They apply to the government as well as to the people; and

They apply to all citizens equally, covering the rich and powerful as well as the poor and powerless.

Today, none of these pillars is stable. Yes, statutes are still passed and signed democratically. But laws are now so intricate and intrusive that their details—the rules that are actually implemented—are promulgated and adjudicated by vast, unaccountable government bureaucracies. Congress has abdicated its responsibilities for oversight, and the courts have largely deferred to bureaucratic rule-making.

Regulation by fiat continues with executive orders. Republican presidents issue them as often as Democrats. Contesting them is so costly and time consuming that only the most egregious, such as President Obama’s rewriting of immigration laws, are effectively challenged.

As for the government itself being subject to law, ask yourself what happened to the EPA and its officials after it unleashed massive, devastating pollution into Colorado’s rivers. Nothing. What happened to VA administrators who created deadly, deceptive records showing military veterans were receiving prompt medical care when they were waiting in line for months? Nothing. What happened to the IRS officials who targeted Tea Party groups or the IRS officials who destroyed Lois Lerner’s emails after being ordered to preserve them? Nothing.

It hardly surprising, then, that public respect for government institutions has sunk to historic lows. (The only exception is the U.S. military, still held in high regard.)

The eroding rule of law goes far beyond Hillary Clinton’s evasions, detailed by FBI Director James Comey. It is also the failure to hold any banks and their executives criminally liable for the massive frauds that led to the 2008 housing debacle and Great Recession. It is the deliberate failure to control national borders.

It is the Democratic Party and its intellectual elites who consider it bigoted to even use the term “illegal” for people who entered the country illegally. It is the nation’s biggest cities openly defying national laws by proclaiming themselves “sanctuaries” for undocumented immigrants. When states try to slow immigration themselves, the White House blocks them. It claims—and the courts agree—that immigration is solely a federal matter, even if Washington refuses to enforce existing laws.

The Constitutional Challenge



This pattern of lawlessness is deeply disturbing because it means (1) citizens are increasingly governed by rules and laws adopted bureaucratically, not democratically, or handed down by presidential diktat, not statutory law, and (2) the laws governing citizens simply do not apply to the government itself. Yet passing laws through constitutional bodies and using them to constrain an overly powerful executive branch is the very heart of liberal, constitutional government.

This was the essence of America’s colonial rebellion against King George and Parliament. The aim was self-government, close to the people being governed. It was best expressed by a farmer-turned-citizen-soldier who fought at Concord in 1775.

Years later, a young lawyer asked the patriot—his name was Levi Preston—why he and his friends had risked their lives. Were they influenced by the Stamp Act or perhaps by the philosophy of John Locke or Baron de Montesquieu? No, sir, he said.

“Well, then, what did you mean in going to the fight?”

“Young man,” said Capt. Preston, “what we meant in going for those redcoats was this: We had always governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.”

That, increasingly, is the issue facing voters. It faces the angry Republicans gathered in Cleveland, too.

They are bound to fail in this election, and not only because the task is Sisyphean. They will fail because they are nominating a man who, like George Bush before him, like Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama, actually believes in strong, centralized government and an energetic chief executive. He never speaks about scaling back Washington’s metastasizing control. His goal is to make it work better.

Better management will surely help, but it is not enough. The problems run far deeper. They are the slow decay of constitutional self-government and the eroding rule of law. Alas, both parties are nominating candidates who are blind to them.