Dear Editor:

Donald Trump is what the Republican Party has been all along: an anti-democratic, anti-rule-of-law party bent on enriching the already rich at the expense of wage earners and consumers. The difference from other GOP leaders is that Trump has made this plain and open.

American political life reached an inflection point in the 1970s. Coming after McCarthy's Red Scare, the civil rights acts, the movement toward ecological preservation, and the establishment of robust social programs, these developments left business interests grasping for ideas to win back power.

Two ideas emerged. The first was to recast Americans who did not share their Gilded Age vision as enemies rather than as a loyal opposition. The second was to embrace the emerging Christian nationalist movement.

Christian churches, for the most part, believed in things like compassion, empathy, and forgiveness: ideas antithetical to making exploitative profits. Many churches' fall from grace occurred around the rise of the so-called prosperity gospel movement, which laid aside the basic teachings of Christianity, succumbing to the third temptation Jesus faced during his 40 days in the desert.

The prosperity gospel fit neatly with the business agenda of restoring Gilded Age ideals, and the interests of these two anti-democratic forces merged under the Republican umbrella.

The early history of the Republican Party is one of high ideals. Comparing the platform of the early GOP with the ideals later embodied in the Great Society reveals striking similarities. What we have lost is a party once driven by ideals, and gained one driven by hate and fear.

The Republican Party was once the party of Lincoln, of trust busting under Theodore Roosevelt, of interstate highways and a balanced budget under Eisenhower. Those were ideas, tested and argued on their merits, not identities to be defended. Rebuilding that party will not come from Washington. It will come from primary voters willing to reject candidates who traffic in grievance and reward those who campaign on ideas instead. It will come from local officials and county chairs choosing platforms over personalities. America does not need a party organized around who its members hate. It needs one organized around what it believes. The Republican Party can still choose to be that party again.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay