Former Bush Speechwriter Says GOP Has Lost Its 'Conscience'

Katie Zehnder | June 14, 2018 5:00 PM

On Tuesday, controversial Republican Corey Stewart won the Virginia primary in the race for the Senate and Mark Sanford, a well known ‘never-Trumper,’ lost in South Carolina.

Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC dedicated a lengthy segment on her show to discuss the GOP and the Christian right. Ruhle’s guests included New York Times correspondent Mark Leibovich, a former aide to George H. W. Bush, as well as George W. Bush speech writer Peter Wehner. Ruhle’s guests on her panel discussed the moral pitfalls that plague the GOP and conservative Christians.

Ruhle asked her panelists what the results of these elections meant for the Republican Party. Rhule asked her panelists where the “conscience” of the GOP had gone, making a subtle dig at controversial tweets made by Stewart and Rep. Steve King.

Wehner responded by claiming that the GOP no longer had a conscience, and that many high ranking Republicans, never were ‘never Trumpers,' like himself.

“Well, it doesn't exist anymore. And the results of last night are going to make it even truer. But they won’t speak publicly because they are afraid of losing,” he noted, according to a report by NewsBusters.

Ruhle played a clip for her panelists of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.) in which he praised the Trump administration as the most “conservative” he has seen since he has been in politics.

“[T]hat claim by McConnell is ridiculous, even on the grounds of policy, Trump has not achieved that much. The tax cut was the big thing. The reality is that if you look at what he's achieved versus Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or any other president, Republican Democrat or in the first year it's pretty minimal,” Wehner reacted.

“This is a man who is a pathological liar, who is not only engaged on an assault on truth, he's trying to annihilate truth. The Republican party is his sword and shield. And they're complicit in the lies and complicit in the deep immorality, and I don’t just mean morality in terms of his sexual ethics, I’m talking a about a man who's basically at his heart, a nihilist, a kind of Niesche and a person who believes that might makes right. And the Republican party which was born in the era of the Civil War and Lincoln, who is the greatest moral leader that America's ever produced is now aligned with this person who is a moral idiot.”