Politics

The End of the Republican Party

We may be witnessing the death throes of the GOP

I think that we are seeing the end of the Republican Party as a sane, legitimate political party. The majority of the members of the party seem to have lost all touch with reality. They are living in an alternate universe where Trump and Trumpism are ascendant, the election was stolen and murder and mayhem are acceptable ways to govern.

Behavior that wouldn’t normally be tolerated doesn’t even merit a reprimand. Take, for instance, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado. She wants to carry a gun into the Capitol. She is in a Twitter feud with a Parkland survivor.

And the Republican reaction? Crickets.

And how about the infamous Marjorie Taylor Greene? Where do I even start? Maybe with the Jewish lasers igniting wildfires from space? Her support for QAnon? How about her belief that school shootings are staged?

What did the Republicans do? Assigned her to the Education Committee, of course. That’s not crazy, that’s looney tunes. Did they learn nothing from the Betsy DeVoss debacle?

Thankfully, the Democrats are being more rational. Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California, is planning on introducing a resolution to have her expelled from Congress for sedition.

Speaking of looney tunes, did you hear that Trump’s legal team quit? What really caught my attention was the reason why they quit. They were working on a defense that trying Trump for impeachment is unconstitutional because he has left office. Very reasonable. Just what you would expect from a crack team of lawyers.

But Trump doesn’t want that. He wants them to argue that there was election fraud. He just can’t let it go. Losing the election seems to be something that he can’t wrap his head around.

And as if that is not crazy enough, Trump (encouraged by Steve Bannon) is considering representing himself at the trial. What is it that they say about a defendant who represents himself? That he has a fool for a client?

And this is the man that the Republican Party has sworn allegiance to. They honestly seem to think that he will lead them to victory in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 general election.

Republicans are no longer living in the same reality as the rest of us. The reality where Biden won the election by 6 million votes. Where thousands of Republicans quit the party after the insurrection. Where Biden’s approval rating is 54.3%, higher than Trump’s 49% at the peak of his popularity in 2020.

What will the Republicans do when Biden does an end run around them and passes his $1.9 trillion relief bill by budget reconciliation and people get vaccinated and the economy starts to open up? When he re-opens the health insurance market place so that people who lost their health insurance can get coverage? When millions of infrastructure and green energy jobs are created?

Will Republicans try to convince Americans that their lives aren’t getting better? That the Democrats have somehow brainwashed them into thinking that their lives are getting better?

It’s looking pretty certain that Republican senators will not vote to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection. It seems that the best that we can hope for is censure. Which means nothing to Trump. He will focus on the fact that he was acquitted. Again.

The Democrats have two years to make Biden’s agenda a reality and show the American people what life is like under a competent president who cares about them. Who spends his days governing rather than playing golf and tweeting.

Two years before the midterm elections. Will more lunatic Republicans be elected to Congress or will sanity prevail and people vote with their wallets, confirming their desire to be governed by a party that inhabits the same reality as the rest of us?