Conservative columnist Matt Lewis this week lamented the fate of the Republican Party under President Donald Trump, whom he accused of transforming the former "Party of Life" into a "death cult."
Writing in The Daily Beast, Lewis shamed fellow conservatives who have followed Trump in blowing off health concerns about prematurely reopening the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"How, for example, is it possible to advocate a culture of life, while prioritizing personal comfort and inviting the tag 'Grandma killer'?" he writes. "'We have prevailed,' Donald Trump declared on Monday, when the confirmed death count was 80,653 and rising. Days earlier, in his visit to the mask factory where he didn’t wear a mask, he’d said enough, already, with the life-or-death concerns: 'I’m not saying anything is perfect, and yes, will some people be affected, yes, will some people be affected badly -- yes, but we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.'"
Lewis acknowledged that there pluses and minuses in various approaches, but he said that Republicans have been too gung-ho about reopening the economy at all costs.
"Yes, life involves inherent risk, and yes, governmental decisions do, to a certain extent, reflect those actuarial realities (even as we seek to mitigate such risk)," he writes. "But far too many Republicans have been cavalier when talking about those trade-offs."
