Skip to main content

GOP Delenda Est

 Why do I think the Republican Party is beyond redemption? I view their policy positions as mostly appalling, but that’s not the reason. I’m going to disagree with pretty much any conservative party, after all. It’s more about the underlying nature of the party leadership and what it believes it has to do in order to win. Over just the past decade or so, the Republican Party:

- Chose Donald Trump as its presidential nominee.
-Has openly strategized about suppressing the Black vote because Black voters heavily favor Democrats.
-Played footsie with insane conspiracy theories like QAnon.
-Spent the entire Obama and Clinton presidencies ginning up fake scandals.
-Lied relentlessly about its dedication to reducing the deficit.
-Lied equally relentlessly about its dedication to passing a health care bill.
-Lied (and lied and lied) about the impact of its tax bills on the rich.
-Has killed untold thousands of people by making mask-wearing into a partisan football during a pandemic.
-Has openly appealed to racial bigotry as a way of increasing its share of the white vote.
-Denied the obvious reality of destructive climate change solely for partisan benefit.
-Is currently doing its best to convince its base that the entire 2020 election was fraudulent.
This is, needless to say, not an exhaustive list, and none of it has anything to do with conservative policy. It speaks solely to the moral judgments of the party’s leaders, and these moral judgements are now so ingrained that I see no hope they’ll ever be abandoned. Perhaps in a different media universe they would have already paid a price for this, but in a conservative media universe dominated by Fox News, talk radio, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page they can get away with almost anything. Most Republican voters probably don’t even know their party has sunk to this level.
The key question is whether it’s possible to convince moderate conservatives to care about this kind of stuff. Or, like so many of us, are they willing to give it a pass as long as Republicans do the things they want them to do? It’s a discouraging thought.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tis for Today in 1925

Today is the birthday of the author and illustrator Edward Gorey, born in Chicago, 1925. His stepmother was the woman playing the guitar during the Marseillaise scene in Casablanca. The New York Times credits bookstore owner Andreas Brown and his store, the Gotham Book Mart, with launching Gorey's career: "it became the central clearing house for Mr. Gorey, presenting exhibitions of his work in the store's gallery and eventually turning him into an international celebrity." Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensibly Victorian and Edwardian settings, have long had a cult following.[7] He made a notable impact on the world of theater with his designs for the 1977 Broadway revival of Dracula, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design. In 1980, Gorey became particularly well known for his animated introduction to the PBS series Mystery! ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bend and Stretch. Reach for the Stars. There Goes Jupiter, There Goes Mars...

On this day in 1976, during an interview on BBC Radio 2, British astronomer Patrick Moore announced that a very rare planetary event was about to take place—that Jupiter and Pluto would soon align in relation to Earth, and their combined gravitational pull would momentarily override Earth's own gravity and make people weigh less. He called it the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect, and said that if people jumped into the air at exactly 9:47 a.m., they would experience a floating sensation. Moore signaled, "Jump now!" over the airwaves, and within minutes the BBC switchboard was flooded with calls from people who claimed it had worked. In 1957, the BBC TV show "Panorama" ran a segment about the Swiss spaghetti harvest enjoying a "bumper year" thanks to mild weather and the elimination of the spaghetti weevil. Many credulous Britons were taken in. In 1998, Mark Boslough fabricated a press release claiming that the Alabama legislature had legally...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Simpsooooooons.

On this day in 1987, the longest running prime time sitcom in TV history debuted. The Simpsons began as a video short on The Tracy Ullman Show. Two years later it was spun off on its own and has now aired more than 650 episodes. It has received numerous awards. The Simpson family has their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Matt Groening has said that his goal in creating The Simpsons was to offer audiences an alternative to the "mainstream trash" they were watching. And while the show often tackles heavy-hitting topics like religion, climate change, poverty, gun control, and nuclear power, its silly jokes and occasionally coarse humor have put some people off. In the early '90s, President George H.W. Bush encouraged Americans to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. First Lady Barbara Bush called The Simpsons "the dumbest thing she had ever seen." But to be like Simpsons may not be so bad after all. The characters embrace and reflect...
Post a Comment
Read more