If the Republicans Cannot Purge Themselves of Trumpism They Do Not Deserve to Survive
As readers of this blog are well aware, I do not care for the Republican party. I really do not care for the Republican party or Republicans in general. I’ve never voted for a Republican. I’m invariably surprised when I find myself admiring or liking a member of the GOP, as was occasionally the case during the Trump presidency, when Republicans of conscience stood up to the bully in the White House despite the consequences.
But I’m also pragmatic enough to realize that we have a two-party system that ensures that Democrats and Republicans must share power, more or less equally.
It’s like the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are divorced parents forced to co-parent the bratty, ill-behaved child that is the United States of America.
We can’t just tell our co-parent to fuck off forever because they suck and we disagree with everything that comes out of their stupid mouth because we have a mutual interest in making sure our progeny turns out okay.
There is a big difference, however, in co-parenting with a parent who has very different views than our own but is fundamentally sane and solid and co-parenting with a parent we disagree with who also belongs to a sinister cult and has a serious crystal meth problem.
Alas, that’s exactly what the Democrats are forced to deal with in the post-Trump Republican party. A party that once stood for something, albeit something I disagree with very strongly, has devolved into a deluded cult of personality with a slippery grasp on reality and the jittery, paranoid instincts of a tweaker deep into a week-long amphetamines binge.
It’s fucking pathetic what has happened to the Republican party. They’ve become an ugly aggregation of masochists just begging for big Daddy Trump to punish them good for even the most minor indiscretions.
Instead of a platform in 2020, the Republicans issued a blanket endorsement of Trump’s “America First” agenda, which is pretty much just racism and lower taxes.
Granted, you could certainly argue that the platform of the Republican party has pretty much always been racism and lower taxes, which helps explain why they’ve been been so successful historically.
But the Republicans at least used to pretend to stand for something. Now they’ve become a party of hypocrites and nihilists who believe in nothing beyond the rightness and strength of Fuhrer Trump.
Trump is probably the most hated man in the world right now. He’s been impeached twice, defeated for a second term and de-platformed yet he remains far and away the most popular and powerful figure in the Republican party.
How sad is that? Trump is the best they’ve got and he’s also the fucking worst.
You could argue that the disgraced ex-president, sham university proprietor and probable sex criminal is the only popular and powerful figure in the Republican Party.
Who else do they have? Ted Cruz? Donald Trump Jr.? Despite the way he has humiliated his party and country on a global and historic scale in the last three months or so, probably costing the GOP control of the Senate with his bullying tactics in Georgia around the 2020 election, ambitious Republicans are still expected to kiss Trump’s ring and beg for his favor, approval and endorsement.
Trump is still the Godfather of the Republican Party and he’s not shy about putting a political hit out on anyone who goes against the family.
The Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln. It’s no longer the party of party of Teddy Roosevelt. It’s not the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Christ, it’s not even the party of Ronald Reagan.
No, in 2021 the Republican party is the party of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn.
These are the half-literate narcissists who will guide the Republican Party going forward. They are its new/old identity. That helps explains why Cawthorn hasn’t gotten into trouble with his party for being a compulsive liar, sexual predator and intellectual dunce. In the Republican Party of 2021, those are no longer seen as negative qualities. On the contrary, they are inveterately Trumpian and what could be better than being like a twice-impeached, disgraced ex-president who still calls the shots from Mar-A-Lago?
The Democratic Party needs an honorable and legitimate opposition. We need to have a liberal party in the Democrats and a Conservative party in the Republicans.
Instead we have a center-left party in the Democrats and crazed, conspiracy addled fascists on the right.
If the Republican Party cannot purge itself to the scourge of Trumpism then it does not deserve to survive.
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