by Carl M. Cannon
Real Clear Politics
For four long years, Donald Trump led Republicans to all kinds of weird places they didn’t want to go — or shouldn’t have wanted to go. Hostility to free trade, a ban on travelers from Muslim countries, praising foreign dictators, deriding an Indiana-born federal judge as “a Mexican” — these are not traditional conservative actions or ideas. Yet, President Trump was, as the saying goes, “the titular head of the Republican Party,” and so the GOP was stuck with his baggage: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Joe Biden ran for president promising to end the ugliness, and to work at uniting the country. He vowed repeatedly that, as president, he’d work as hard for those who voted against him as for those who supported him. In his inaugural address, he spoke evocatively about Americans not demonizing one another. Think of those who disagree with you politically as neighbors, he said, not enemies. As for his policies, unlike Trump, Biden embraced the mainstream thinking in his political party. But that positioning is proving incompatible with his desire for national “unity.” Americans are witnessing the flip side of the Trump dynamic. Biden isn’t leading, he’s following. And the Democratic Party is taking Biden to places he shouldn’t want to go.