Trump's inability to admit defeat has 'swallowed much of the Republican Party whole': conservative author

In an excerpt from his book "Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence," reprinted by Politico, conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy chastised the Republican party for following in the footsteps of Donald Trump and not accepting losing gracefully.

As Ramaswamy sees it, there was a time when GOP lawmakers accepted the fact that campaigns could be lost as well as won but Trump's insistence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him -- and his fan's embrace of his claims -- has other Republicans using election setbacks as a tool to generate outrage and fundraising.

Ramaswamy used Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams' contention that she was denied the governorship of her state by her opponent Brian Kemp as an example that victimhood stretches across both parties, before making his case against the GOP.

"Conservatives have their own victimhood complexes these days; we are, after all, a nation of victims now. All that differs is whom we see as our oppressors. The worst victimhood narrative that afflicts modern conservatives is their budding belief that any election they lose must have been stolen. Instead of distinguishing ourselves as the party that strives for excellence and rejects the easy path of victimhood narratives, we simply created our own," he wrote.

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Adding, "While Donald Trump promised to lead the nation to recommit itself to the pursuit of greatness, what he delivered in the end was just another tale of grievance, a persecution complex that swallowed much of the Republican Party whole," he complained, "Why do I see Republicans insisting that the presidential election was stolen, yet accepting the legitimacy of the congressional ones?"

"At times, the Republican party seems to be moving toward the position that any races it wins are legitimate and any it loses were stolen. That’s not a tenable view. It’s just the preferred conservative brand of victimhood, a knee-jerk kind of sore losing more common to playgrounds than great republics, he continued before adding that it has become not just a central tenet of the GOP, but of the country as a whole.

He explained, "Republicans could’ve become the one major party that moved beyond grievance and aimed only for greatness; instead we placed grudges about elections at the core of party identity. Once victimhood becomes part of the essence of both parties, it’s just a national identity."

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Worse still, he claimed, the inability to admit a loss is dangerous to the country and democracy and can only lead to chaos in elections going forward.

In his view as a conservative, when it comes to claiming victimhood, there is little to distinguish Republicans from Democrats.o

"Maybe no one likes a sore loser, but it seems everyone likes being one. Wallowing in this shared victimhood narrative may soothe the sting of defeat, but it’s poison to the rule of law. Republicans were in prime position to reject identity politics, including the game of identifying as a victim, but instead we used stolen election stories as a backdoor to embracing our own victim identity, pursuing the easy path to power" he wrote before cautioning, "Fighting fire with fire might sound appealing, but water’s actually the better choice."