Former Rep. Bob Good, former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, indicated that the Republican Party is not "a conservative party anymore."
Page B1From§Eachthe noon edition — 1 September 2026
GOP insider says his party isn't conservative anymore; polling confirms it's not popular either.
As it ran on the front
OBITUARY: The Conservative Wing of the Republican Party, self-identification, age indeterminate, passed away sometime before this week, when a former chair of the House Freedom Caucus said the plain part out loud: the party he helped build "isn't a conservative party anymore." He did add, for the record, that the Democrats are worse. Survivors are asked to hold their applause.
Born sometime in the movement conservatism of decades past, raised on balanced budgets and small government as first principles, the deceased spent recent years drifting from those principles one appropriations fight at a time, until a man who used to chair its own caucus felt he had to say so from outside the building.…
…(cont) It is survived by a polling number: the current president's approval, according to the same week's reporting, sitting at the lowest point of his political career. Whether that number is a coincidence, a consequence, or a coroner's report is left as an exercise for the reader; this desk deals in the death certificate, not the cause.
It was preceded in death by a great many things this desk has already buried this year — norms, mostly, whippersnapper things nobody thought to write down until they were gone. Those are cheaper to lose than a name, and a name is what got lost this week. The chairman didn't say the party changed. He said it stopped being what it called itself. That's not spin, that's an obituary writing itself.
No services are planned. There is, this desk notes gently, a certain shit-eating quality to being told by your own former leadership that the label never fit, right as the polling confirms the label wasn't the only thing that stopped fitting. That's the one hard word this column gets, used flat, beside a soft sentence, because the rule is worth keeping even when the subject doesn't much deserve the courtesy.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that mourners register to vote in whatever primary comes next, and read the platform before they do, because apparently somebody has to.
“A guy who used to run the Freedom Caucus just admitted the party he built isn't what it says on the label — and the polling landed the same week to back him up. When the insider and the survey agree, that's not spin, that's just Tuesday.”
“This is healthy self-reflection, not decline — every successful movement occasionally rebrands, and being called 'not conservative' while still being called 'better than the Democrats' is actually a pretty strong position... though I'll admit 'better than the alternative' isn't usually the slogan you lead a campaign with.”
The receipts
President Trump's approval rating has remained stagnant at the lowest point between his two presidencies, according to a new poll. The latest Reuters/Ipsos survey shows that Trump's approval rating has remained at 33 percent — the third time the pollsters have found this result — amid the unpopularity of the Iran war and rising prices....
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.