A Longtime Republican’s Values Would be Unrecognizable in Today’s Party

Kevin Hermening’s recent announcement of his run for state assembly prompted the memory of a photo my Aunt Irene happily showed me some years ago.  Over age 80, she was seated behind Mr. Hermening on his motorcycle, two committed
Republicans about to go for a ride at a fundraiser.

Were my aunt, a long time leader of Republican women, able to look down upon the 2026 Republican Party, there is not much in it she would recognize.

A fiscal conservative, relentlessly advocating for balanced budgets, she would be taken aback by the Big Beautiful Bill signed into law by the president on July 4, 2025, a law that could lead to a 2 trillion dollar deficit at the end of its first fiscal year.

Since state and local control was a bedrock Republican and conservative principle for as long as she was alive, Aunt Irene would be scratching her head watching the president amass federal executive power, disempowering state elected officials in the House and Senate  She would skeptically view Republican state and local officials who often look to the president for guidance rather than to the citizens they were elected to serve.

Living through the post WW II cold war and beyond, my aunt would be surprised to see the president and many of his colleagues turn their backs on NATO, the democratic alliance that energized western economic and military power, secured the defense against Russian expansionism and increasingly works to deter Chinese advances in technology seen as current economic and national security threats to the U.S.

Like most of her Republican friends and colleagues, she accepted the moral and legal standards her party ascribed to and would certainly be unaccepting of many of the president’s words and actions beginning with his 2016 election campaign.
A proud member of Trinity Lutheran Church who greeted the first Wausau Hmong family, immigrant refugees fleeing from the U.S. failed war in Laos, she would be disturbed by the visual images of federal law enforcement hunting down immigrant
children in schools and homes for detention and possible deportation.

Since Mr. Hermening gives full praise to WI house representative, Tom Tiffany, the man he is hoping to replace, we must assume he fully embraces President Trump’s Republican Party as Mr. Tiffany has. I’d guess that if she could, Aunt Irene might not be eager to display that picture when she sat on a motorcycle behind her then Republican colleague.