I found my self watching the season two DVD set of Saturday Night Live, when I looked at the photo booklet that accompanied the set. In the booklet, there’s a picture of a note from Lily Tomlin which said:

“Don’t be timid
Don’t be non-descript
Be assholes”

And that sums up what the Republican Party has been since I’ve been aware of it. The Republican Party is timid. They are nondescript. And the second one is really the key. That they are nondescript.

In absence of taking any sort of stand and showing any conviction at all, the Republican Party, and conservatives in general, have a void as a soul. And you know what they say about nature loving a void.

Democrats are more than happy to fill that void and define the Republican brand for them. And they have. They have defined the Republican Party as self-serving, self-centered rich racist, bigoted, homophobic, sexist, anti-science, white supremacists who care nothing about other people or the environment we all inhabit.

Stop and think about some of the people who’ve truly defined their area of expertise and changed the world: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Margaret Thatcher, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, LeBron James, Ellen DeGeneres, Tiger Woods, Bill Belichick, Nancy Pelosi, Elon Musk, Lady Gaga, Bill Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, to name a few. One thing they all have in common is there are no shortage of people who think they’re assholes.

But what makes them assholes? Why do people see them as assholes? Simple. Because they weren’t afraid. They were concerned with convention. In fact, they were trying to defy it. They were trying to break it.

The Republican Party, however sold out they are, is sitting on the greatest, most easily sold product in the history of humanity: conservatism.

Conservatism is liberty and freedom. It allows people to pursue their dreams, chart their own course, and make their own destiny. Conservatism allows you to say what you want and others to say what they want. It allows ideas to compete, with the best ones rising to the top. It rewards hard work, regardless of the profession or pursuit.

Conservatism is about joy and optimism. It’s about truth. It stands for peace, but will defend freedom to the death. Conservatives enjoy life. They want to be left alone to live their lives, and even better, they want to leave other people alone to live theirs.

Conservatives try to live by a moral code – usually fueled by religion – and they realize that a moral code is a set of high standards one tries to live by, knowing that every one will fail and yield to temptation now and again. Conservatism is about minimizing those lapses, but suffering consequences when you do stray.

However, conservatism can’t withstand attacks if it is not defended. If it is allowed to be miscast and bastardized, as Democrats have, it gets twisted and warped.

The Republicans aren’t assholes, but the Democrats definitely are. They are not afraid. They don’t back down from confrontation, and they’re brazen in every initiative they undertake. That’s why they win.

The reason Donald Trump is effective is because he bluntly, confidently, defiantly, and unapologetically speaks out against leftists, even though he wasn’t actually defending or teaching conservatism. (Ironically, I don’t think he truly understands or knows how to articulate conservatism. His ideology seemed far more instinctive.)

Trump proudly defends an otherwise ridiculed and dismissed middle America. He’s a fighter, and he simply wouldn’t let any disrespect against him or his supporters stand. Imagine if that described the way the Republican Party defended conservatism.

The Republican Party never lived up to its potential, and now it is dead. Hopefully, conservatives will take away the most important lessons from four years of Donald Trump. We don’t Donald Trump to fight for freedom and liberty. But we need someone who’s an asshole, just like Donald Trump.