(Note- we've updated this several times since it was originally posted.)
Nothing lasts forever (except Twinkies and successive rule 3's). The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of a failed political philosophy. The Republican party is about to collapse for the same reason.
Donald Trump is going to tear the party apart. The party elite will not let him win the nomination. And when they give the nomination to someone else, Donald Trump is going to take his forty percent of the party that is voting for him, along with the millions of new and disaffected voters, and he is going to form a new party: TRUMP (what else were you expecting him to call his new party?).
The Republican party was sick and ready to die. The party has always been a party of moderates. TR who created the modern National Park system, Eisenhower's farewell speech warning about the military-industrial complex, and Richard Nixon, who ushered in the EPA, wage and price controls, and went to China.
Ronald Wilson Reagan raised taxes as president six of his eight years. As Governor of California Reagan also raised taxes his first two years (and then refunded the money when the state got back on its feet) and he signed one of the most liberal abortion bills in the nation at the time because he was unwilling to let Californian women die in back alleys. GHWB was straight out of the eastern Republican elite. He cared about education and minorities, and he courageously raised taxes, costing him a second term, but setting the country on a course of fiscal sanity that eventually ended up with budget surpluses a few years later. One need only watch Reagan and Bush try to outdo each other in the 1980 Republican primary in a debate before the League of Women Voters as to which candidate cared more about HELPING Mexican immigrant workers, to understand that both Reagan and Bush were bleeding-heart social moderates.
But then came the 1990's, the rise of the religious right, and the anti-tax movement which requires all Republican candidates to sign a pledge that they never ever ever will vote to raise taxes. Flint, Michigan can poison its citizens, Louisiana might need disaster relief help from hurricanes, and two wars costing a trillion dollars can empty out treasury so that bridges and roads collapse. But woe be any Republican who raises taxes so that the government can respond.
Watch as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan all rush to heap praise on Nancy Reagan who passed away on Sunday. But none of them will mention that the former first lady was a passionate advocate for stem cell research because the Republican Party is anti-science and pro-prayer. Mrs. Reagan knew that only stem cell research could provide the breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimers disease- which is what killed her beloved Ronnie.
The Republican mythology of Ronald Wilson Reagan doesn't match Reagan's ideology. Ronald Reagan took down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union and conservatives idolize him. Right up to the point of gun control. And then they won't mention the president who was nearly assassinated by a hand gun purchased by a mentally ill man. A hand gun that every current Republican believes should be MORE available not less available. Reagan's ideas defeated communism, but not the NRA.
How can such a party survive with such philosophical inconsistencies? They can't. To quote the first and greatest Republican President, Abraham Lincoln: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
Somewhere after Bush 41 and before Bush 43 the party lost its mind. Literally. Science was ridiculed. Faith was worshiped. Every leader of every civilized country in the world knows that fossil fuels are causing the planet to rapidly and dangerously warm. In the face of science the Republicans selected a woman candidate for vice president who drew huge crowds and applause with the line "drill baby, drill" even as her home state Alaska experienced the warmest decade on record. Icebergs melted. Polar Bears starved. And in response people screamed in delirium when Sarah Palin chanted.
Enter Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and the lasting effects of disastrous trade policies of the Clinton years. Bernie Sanders is going around the country yelling that over the last decade 60,000 factories in the US have closed. Yes, you read that right: 60,000. Factories. The number boggles the mind.
Obama and the political coalition he created of women, people of color, and smart, educated white collar workers, heralded in the newest minority in American politics: angry, white, uneducated, evangelical, unemployed (or under-employed), blue collar workers (AWUEUBCW)
AWUEUBCWs no longer have the political power to win a national election, and more than likely they have lost their job to a factory that has moved overseas and they are competing with Hispanic immigrants for the lowest paying jobs in the service industry. To quote the movie Network, "They're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore."
Enter Donald Trump. He is rude and crude. He debates by ridiculing the way people look. He appeals to that segment of the republican establishment which long ago abandoned the mind as a means of American success. Since prayer doesn't have immediate demonstrable effects, the only thing left for AWUEUBCWs is crudeness and anger. Trump treats other politicians the way these people want to treat their Hispanic boss at McDonalds. He makes fun of a handicapped reporter, and a female rival who doesn't have the beauty of his third model wife. He belittles Marco Rubio for his height, and calls Mitt Romney a loser. In short, he acts like the guys in the locker room act.
For years Romney and other Republicans pandered to AWUEUBCWs. They were to be courted and endured, but once in power (wink wink) President Romney was not going to make fun of President Xi Jinping of China, because he is shorter and has slanty eyes. Trump will. And because Romney and George W Bush before him courted the AWUEUBCWs who rejected intelligence and education and science in favor or prayer and slogans (drill baby, drill) they cannot now be heard to bemoan that a savior has appeared for these people and that their numbers have multiplied. You reap what you sow (or drill) and the universe enacts a heavy toll for those who deny reality.
Trump is poised to win the nomination because the AWUEUBCWs don't care about diplomacy, the Geneva Convention, or the science behind global warming. They've never read the Federalist Papers and they don't even know what they are. They want the Constitution to be strictly followed, although they've never read it. "Congress Shall make no law respecting an establishment of a religion..." That cannot be part of the Constitution that must be literally interpreted. This is, after all, a Christian nation. Just ask the AWUEUBCWs. Less than one percent of them could identify the above quote as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
The AWUEUBCWs are Christian right up to the point of "do unto others...unless they cross the border. Then build a wall and let them all die."
Building a wall and making Mexico pay is a direct descendant of "drill baby, drill." It is wrong, impractical, illegal, will have disastrous consequences, and sounds so simple. A one word sentence to resolve an age old problem. This is what the AWUEUBCWs understand. Mitt and George W wanted these people to vote for them. So they encouraged them. Until someone better came along.
Let us put this in simple terms we can all understand. They created Frankenstein, and they now have no right to curse the monster that is destroying their party.
So Trump takes the AWUEUBCWs and forms TRUMP.
Marco Rubio is no TR, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan or Bush, so he cannot inherit the mantel of the intelligent Republican-the ones outside the belt-way of DC who almost gave him the Virginia primary. Eventually someone like John Kasic will rally them around a new moderate Republican party.
And Ted Cruz, head bowed in prayer, will mop up the rest of evangelists who didn't leave with Trump. Cruz will pray at Falwell's University. He will scream about never compromising about anything (except the establishment clause of the First Amendment) and he will be the new head of the Prayer-Party".
And there you have what ignorance has wrought. The destruction of the Republican party.
George W and Romney created the monster by looking the other way and not denouncing the rise of AWUEUBCWs. And now Franken-Trump has broken the party of Lincoln.
As the bible they so love and worship says: You reap what you Sow.
Is this screed elitist and intellectual? Does it denigrate the stupid and anti-intellectuals who believe in slogans and prayer above education, intelligence and science?
You're goddamned right it does.
The Know Nothing party and William Jennings Bryant ghosts have returned to haunt the Republicans
ReplyDeleteThe republicans have worked for generations to deprive poor and middle income people of education -- starting with Reagan's ketchup is a vegetable through the voucher/charter movement, through the demonization of the teachers' unions and liberal arts education, through marginalization of fact-based reporting, through tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts. Thus the rise of the stupids. This is not an elitest observation, any more than global warming is an elitest observation. Why would republicans do this? Uneducated people are easy to manipulate through appeals to fear and racial animus.
ReplyDeleteThe republicans have thus ushered us into an institutionalized dark age. How does a society emerge from that.
You ARE right and I'm loving the theater of it. Great piece. Really hit it with "Franken Trump"!
ReplyDeleteAre you this pompous in real life?
ReplyDeleteWell written. So that leaves us 2 choices; Hillary, who is about as untrustworthy as a politician can be be. Or Trump. Sadly, I'm going with Trump. Maybe Mitt will throw his hat in the ring in the last minute. Who knows.
ReplyDelete10:38 in real life I am much less humble.
ReplyDelete😴😴😴😴😴😴😴😴😴😴😴😴😴
ReplyDeleteElitist, yes. Intellectual, no.
ReplyDeleteRIP America is more like it, Rumpole and you're the flip side of the coin about which you complain.
Rumpole, you sound like you haven't gotten laid since the first Bush administration.
ReplyDeleteThis is my Trump moment.
ReplyDeleteLet's just say I have big hands,and know how to use them.
Rumpole, as a criminal defense lawyer, you ought to be more skeptic and less credulous than the average person, specially in matters where billions of dollars are at stake such as man-made climate change. Here's some info:
ReplyDeletehttp://realclimatescience.com/2016/03/noaa-radiosonde-data-shows-no-warming-for-58-years/
On yourself! Oh, snap!
ReplyDeleteYour data is completely wrong and the site is not a scientific site. It's a site invested in disproving climate change. The simple fact is that last year was one of the warmest years on record. February was recorded as the warmest month in the history of both poles. The ice at both caps is melting at an alarming rate that has been scientifically measured. This is why there is now a navigable northwest passage over the north pole. The ice is gone. The oceans are routinely putting up record warming numbers month after month. Even the cold winter storms are directly related to the overall warming of the globe. This is not an issue. It is not a question for any reasonable person who believes in science. But keep chanting "drill baby drill" right up until the time Miami Beach is submerged by the ocean. You've read the stories about the flooding in Miami Beach from the ocean, correct? Where is that extra water that is raising the ocean levels coming from? Melting ice.
ReplyDeleteDrill baby drill right up until you drown baby drown.
Oh look, more pejorative references to prayer and Christianity. What a serious thinker! What a tolerant progressive!
ReplyDeleteOnce again, the pseudonymity of the blog fails its author. Ridiculing the faith of the majority of your countrymen without owning and stating your own background renders the critique mere gas-baggery.
Who gives a shit whether global warming is man made or not! How does it hurt us and our children to put less pollutants into the environment and develop clean sources of energy. GEEZ! Also why repeal and replace Obamacare? just replace it you ignorant assholes. These and a sundry of other stupidities is why I left the GOP after 40 years of membership, They stand for nothing other than the opposite of what Obama is for. It has been tough watching the tragic suicide of a once great party. They are about to share space with the whigs, copperheads and knownothings.
ReplyDeleteI do not ridicule Christianity. I do not ridicule people of faith.
ReplyDeleteI do ridicule those who substitute faith for science in decision making and in politics. A person's faith should be private. Christianity should not be a political issue. I am as uncomfortable with a political body called "Evangelicals" as a voting force as you would be if there was a powerful political force called Muslims, Buddhists, or Jews. I am sure you would be despondent to the point of suicide if republicans were saying that they had to capture the Muslim vote or the Buddhist vote and were shaping their policies accordingly.
It further frightens me when in the face of science people want prayer to deal with global warming or terrorism or finances. That scares me. And it would scare me if it were Jews doing it, Muslims doing it (and that is precisely what ISIS does) or Buddhists doing it. Religion as a decision making authority is antithetical to democracy. When ISIS takes over a town in Iraq they impose strict religious values and kill those who don't follow.
I am fairly certain that a 99% majority of people who describe themselves as Evangelicals would vote to approve a constitutional amendment declaring America to be a Christian country and prohibiting anyone who does not accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior as being ineligible to be a citizen or hold office. These same people roll on the ground in religious Ecstasy when politicians say the constitution should be strictly interpreted. Right up until they read the establishment clause of the first amendment, which most of them have never done and I am sure almost all of them disapprove of.
That's my problem with the religious right.