For most of 40 years Ron Kjar (pronounced Care) headed the history department at Duchesne High School in St. Charles. He also served in high level posts within Missouri’s Republican Party. And, after the 1972 Presidential Election he went to Jefferson City to vote as a member of the Electoral College – a prestigious event he related as exciting as ordering a sandwich at lunch.
I was in his class the afternoon of October 10, 1973 when the school guidance counselor, looking solemn, stepped into Ron’s classroom. They talked for a few seconds, then Ron abandoned his lecture: Spiro Agnew had just resigned as Vice President of the United States. That, the genetically Republican explained, meant that not only was Agnew guilty of the charges against him but that Richard Nixon must be guilty too. An innocent Nixon would have protected his Vice President.
As he predicted, Republican officeholders fell like zapped bugs in the next year’s election. For true believers like Ron Kjar the greatest pain came not from election losses but from the betrayal of basic Republican values, the placing of personal gain in front of philosophical goals generations of political activists shared.
That won’t happen this time.
After Nixon, long-held Republican ideals evaporated. Note how Reagan ran-up massive deficits, how both Bush presidents jumped into foreign wars, and, how Trump’s Cabinet daily slashes protections for the environment and workers. While it’s still true what Will Rogers’ said about Democrats, the Republicans moved from a medium-sized party tent to a porta potty. The Republican Party might as well abandon the elephant on their logo, replacing it with a giant gold T.
Out about the country millions of true believer Republicans long for those core values Ron Kjar worshipped. They’re screwed. That old Republican Party will never return.
And, each hour it becomes more obvious that the walls of the House of Trump are crumbling. Whether impeached or not, Donald Trump is in decline, the carnival packing-up.
What happens to the Republican Party? Well, they’ll remain an incoherent mess of expedient positions, following a pseudo-platform determined by polls and the whims of big donors.
Ron Kjar passed away a couple of summers ago. They held a big Memorial Service at Duchesne, with hundreds of former students in attendance.
Ironically, few prominent Republican made it: the Republican Party so dominates St. Charles politics that it had, inevitably, fragmented. Ron’s GOP traditional values mean little. Many were probably happy that their valiant warrior had fallen.
Glenn