Sometimes all you can do it is to just breathe and stand back.
“I never expected the ultra-MAGA Republicans who seemed to control the Republican Party now,” the president of the United States saidMonday. “I never anticipated that happening.”
We have all been screaming for decades about the inexorable march to this exact state of affairs. The willful ignorance of this statement by Biden is truly astonishing.
Imagine what it would look like if Bill GatesDeclared that he just recently realized that electrons are a thing, or Luciano Pavarotti simply thought he was. yelling the whole time, or if they began using Diet Coke and MentosThe fountains at Bellagio. Right? This is not the reality. I’m not sure what sort of perspective the president is leaning on when he makes the kind of proclamation he coughed up on Monday, but it has little to do with the goings-on down here on this ball of dirt we call Earth.
Almost completely without fail, President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Schumer and every other member of the ossified Democratic Party “leadership” somehow fail time and again to see what has been staring them in the face since Ronald Reagan rewired the country. Even this article isn’t new; I’ve written a version of it annually for more than 20 years now, and not even the damn names change.
Yesterday’s big Senate vote on abortion? This was supposed to be Schumer’s big strategic move, or something. What was the point? To get Republicans on record as opposing abortion. WELL STONE the CROWS. Who would have thought it would end up like it did?
Nearly all of the Republicans in Congress are able to voice their disapproval for RoeIf I place my bet, each vote went into a direct fundraising mailing to the GOP base. Ol’ Chuck made some money for his pals across the aisle, and gave Joe Manchin another chance to stick his thumb in Schumer’s eye. It would have been a good idea to let them vote on whether they are mammals.
Help me out here, because maybe it’s me… but how many clues do you need before you come to conclude that the GOP is no longer a political party, but a well-funded far right insurrection club packed to bursting with a rancid concoction of woman-haters, gay-bashers, flagrant racists, gun fetishists, Christian dominionists and warmongers with dreams of empire oozing from their eyes?
Trump didn’t do this; politically and historically speaking, he came down with the last drop of rain. He simply turned the switch and applied shameless treatment to every grievance these people had been harboring for over 40 years. They haven’t been quiet about it, either. Where’s the damn mystery here?
Perhaps it was a clue when Newt Geingrich transformed the House of Representatives in a single-minded engine of destruction against the Clinton White House.
It was evident when Roger Stone, a Republican activist, attacked Florida’s vote count and handed the 2000 election to another right-leaning Supreme Court.
It was there that George W. Bush and a bunch Reagan cast-offs deceived us into two consecutive decades of wars.
It wasn’t magic when Bush supporters became Tea Partiers and then MAGA fanatics. It’s all the same GOP base, the grandchildren of Barry Goldwater. They simply changed the spelling of a bunch of protest signs and wore new t-shirts. They are the exact same people with the identical goalsThey have been with us since Bobby Kennedy was shot. Would flashcards be useful?
President Biden shouldn’t need to be reminded of this one, because he was right there in the front row when it happened: GOP governors from a pile of red states Were not willing to accept any money for free to start their Affordable Care Act exchanges, because doing so would badly damage the program’s rollout and deny Barack Obama a clean win. These guys screwed their states and millions of their constituents just to brick the nation’s first Black president. I can draw you a map.
What has happened recently? Hm… how about four long years of Donald Trump frothing hate and madness into every available camera? What about his supporters supporting him, no matter what career-killing error he made? How about the violence of his rallies and the swelling ranks of the “patriot” militias? How about the Gohmerts, Greenes and Gosars and Jordans not-so quietly becoming the voice of the party, while they work to defenestrate that very government they serve? Back in Lincoln’s day, people like that were called “Copperheads” and cast as poisonous snakes wielding venom to support the Confederacy. Now, they’re called “Republicans,” and the Democratic leadership barely bats an eye.
How about the attack against the Capitol? The Confederate battle flag was carried down the marble halls of the Capitol by fervent Trump supporters, who feverishly threatened to hang Democrats. gibbetHe was still waiting on the lawn. Trump offered his vice president as a blood-sacrifice to the mob. This was a twist of events that was narrowly avoided, because Pence can run faster when the chips are down.
What about Trump leading the 2024 presidential race pack by galactic margins despite all that has happened? That isn’t enough to inform Biden that his old pals in the Republican Party are literally or figuratively dead and buried, and bourbons with secessionists is no longer on the menu because they’d just as soon throw him down the stairs as pass a word with him?
Here’s what I’d like, and it should not be hard to pull off. Get Schumer, Pelosi, Biden and Pelosi locked in a room with Liz Cheney. Let Cheney and Kinzinger tell you in detail why they chose to leave. subpoenaed five Republican House membersOver the 1/6 rebellion. Also, they should explain to Trump and his people how they are laboring mightily to steal the next presidential electionIn broad daylight.
They are ideal for this role because they have the same family as the bedlamists running their party, so Cheney and Kinzinger would be great. How long has this been going on? They know. What can they do to stop it? They may have some ideas.
Even if it is bare-bones, such a meeting might be enough to help these Democrats see the truth. They seem constitutionally incapable, however, of properly judging intent and caliber of their adversaries. The republic is sliding down the edge like a sharp knife right now, and doe eye surprise that there are some mean people in this building is exactly what is needed at the moment.
It won’t actually solve anything, of course, but God help us, it’s a start. Perhaps I can stop writing this article every single year.
