Grand Old Party: RIP

The Republican Party died Thursday, July 21, 2016, at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, following a hard-fought battle for its soul. It was 162.

It was preceded in death by its principles.

Survivors include its loyal companions — political columnist George Will, Sen. Lindsey Graham and others who attempted to keep it on life support.

The Nixon morbidity

The “Grand Old Party,” aka the GOP, was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, on March 20, 1854, to the Whig family, who brought it up to halt the spread of slavery — an institution certain followers of its modern-day successor would eagerly restore.

It was conceived in a spirit of charity and decency that began to fade in earnest in 1960, when Richard Nixon bore its standard for the first time.

In its early years, the Republican Party was personified by the humble figure of President Abraham Lincoln, whose nicknames included “The Great Emancipator.”

In the year 2016, the shattered remnants of the GOP were picked up and flushed down an onyx toilet by a man who might accurately be assigned the title of the Great Impersonator, the Great Dictator and/or the Great Depression.

As the Republican Party grew older, it made mistakes and ill-advised decisions that risked its health on occasion, but it always managed to get better, particularly during those years it followed the counsels of such presidents as William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower.

During the Nixon years, the Republican Party suffered a sudden and extremely expected illness, nearly succumbing — many people believed — to a debilitating pestilence called Watergate. Apparently, four years of Jimmy Carter was the cure.

Bushwhacked

In the wake of the Carter presidency, the Republican Party recovered, thanks to an eight-year dose of Reaganomics and an era of feel-good presidential unaccountability.

Soon enough, the party was over. Almost immediately following the Reagan Placebo Effect, the GOP took a turn for the worse during four years of infirmity under George H.W. Bush.

For the ensuing eight years, the health of the Republican Party appeared to be in decline, until it was rescued by a modern-day miracle called Bush v. Gore. But that was the beginning of the end.

One global economic disaster and two Obama victories later, the Republican Party conducted its own post-mortem, although it wasn’t quite dead.

By 2015, it was ignoring every recommendation linked to its possible convalescence, weakening itself to the point it became susceptible to a deadly parasitic worm that has quickly infected much of the nation with an old disease bearing a new name.

The body of the Republican Party will be laid at the feet of all those who could have prevented its demise.

In lieu of flowers, they request that you send donations to the legal defense team of Trump University.

Gary Pettus is a Jackson-based journalist and contributing columnist.