Back to the GOP commandments: Principle vs. the personal

President Ronald Reagan popularized the 11th commandment for Republicans: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican candidate.”

This admonition originated from Dr. Gaylord Parkinson during the biting campaigns of the 1960s. California’s new chair of the Republican Party personally promulgated this principle throughout the network of county committees to blunt the acidity corroding the debate in his own party.

Today, this principle guides the national party through, among others, its Federation of Republican Women’s Clubs, including Beaufort’s own, as it refrains from endorsing candidates in primary selections.

Electioneering “weapons” used to be “issues”: a candidate’s position on the economy, foreign entanglements, and government over-reach. But now, personal flaws, particularly “infidelities” over issues, appear to be the go-to weapon of choice (with a scandal-focused mainstream media augmenting the firepower).

If a candidate chooses “personal flaws” as an offensive tactic, it is, in our old-school view, hitting below the belt. And if wielded in judgment, he or she has “weaponized” his or her own personal flaws.

Aleksandyr Solzhenitsyn, in a 1978 reprint of his memoir in National Review on June 25, comments: “A sense of responsibility before God and society has fallen away ...”

Have we fallen so low, using the weapon of “personal flaws,” that such a standard is unreachable? And are we inextricably mired in the killing fields below the belt?

“Weapons of grace” can still lift campaigns, and our nation, out of the mire and propel us all in running our race well.

We also believe a 12th commandment should be: Pointed wisdom, tempered by responsible decency, as exemplified by Charles Krauthammer, 1950-2018, RIP.