December 8, 2022 at 1:23 p.m.
GOP R.I.P.
GOP R.I.P.
With Herschel Walker's defeat in the Georgia Senate run-off, the GOP has completely self-immolated. In a time of smothering inflation, of a bad overall economy, of a Democratic administration and party platform whose cultural elitism is deeply unpopular, of a party that embraces the destruction of women's rights and has crossed that uncrossable line of embracing child abuse, even with all that, the Democratic Party still somehow managed to win the mid-terms.
That's just how unpopular the Republican Party is: People would rather be governed by a party that is home to ideological child abusers and sexist socialists than by Republicans. If ever there was a time for reflection, this is it.
Republicans should not console themselves with the fact they won the House by a thin margin, especially when they went backwards in the Senate. That is to say, without redistricting advantages, the GOP would not even control the House. To wit, in state redistricting, Republicans created enough new GOP safe districts to give them a technical margin, and a technical margin only - one in Tennessee, one in Texas, one in Georgia, and three in Florida.
If the Republicans had captured their projected and expected majority of about 24-30 seats, one could say the GOP had a good night ideologically. This, on the other hand, was a disaster.
Look at the Senate. Herschel Walker lost. Mehmet Oz lost. Paul Laxalt lost. Blake Masters lost. Kelly Tshibaka lost (to fake Republican Lisa Murkowski), Don Bolduc lost.
Of those Senate races where incumbent Democrats were in trouble, or at least the race was competitive, the Republicans won none. Let that sink in, as Elon Musk might say: They won NONE.
If the real Joe Biden was still alive, he'd be happy. As it is, his body shell is smiling.
There are immense problems and the Republican Party had better solve them pretty quickly if it doesn't want to be sent into complete irrelevance, at best, or into totalitarian political oblivion, at worst.
The first thing the GOP needs to do is assert a bold conservative vision for the party and the country. The problem isn't the conservative agenda, or the democratic nationalist agenda, or Trumpism, whatever you want to call it. The problem is that the party's base, not to mention the nation's independents, don't believe Republican leadership will actually deliver on that agenda, or even believes in it.
During the mid-term election season, Fox News analyst Brit Hume made a telling observation. If you look at the opinion polls, he said - and, by the way, they turned out to be pretty accurate this year - voters constantly listed Republican issues such as inflation, the economy, parental rights in education, crime, and taxes as their top issues of concern. Democratic priorities, even abortion, were way down or at the bottom of almost every list.
Yet, in those same polls, those same voters, when asked whom they preferred in a head-to-head match-up, chose the Democrat over the Republican. That's a big disconnect.
What it shows is that voters don't reject conservative issues. They are rejecting Republican candidates and a party they don't believe will be any better than the Democrats they would replace.
Who can blame them? First, there are the woeful candidates. In Pennsylvania, Oz had flip-flopped on abortion so many times he was starting to cause seizures among the general population. He was topped in that regard only by Tim Michels here in Wisconsin. Michels also promised to cut taxes but couldn't tell us how, only that "experts" would tell him how to do it.
Right! The same experts who have been screwing us for decades.
What about strategy? Mitch McConnell, when he wasn't funneling money to ideological liberals like Murkowski, was telling candidates to avoid policy prescriptions, just highlight how bad the Democrats are. OK then!
Oh, and then we are supposed to believe the party in Washington is conservative like us when they turn around and re-elect McConnell as minority leader in the Senate.
What about hypocrisy? Every time the Democrats accuse Republicans of being serious threats to democracy and the constitution, not to mention to long-cherished programs, the Republicans oblige them.
Democrats spent decades saying Republicans would end Medicare and Social Security before Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott awkwardly allowed himself to be painted into that corner right before the mid-terms. He didn't propose privatizing them, but he did include them in his proposed sunset legislation that would require review and active congressional affirmation of all programs every five years. That opens the door to privatization, or worse.
And after Republicans spent decades arguing that they wanted Roe v. Wade overturned to return the abortion issue to the states where it belongs - which is what the court decision does - S.C. Sen. Lindsey Graham turned around and introduced a national abortion ban, attempting to refederalize the issue just as Democrats predicted the GOP would do.
And they unleashed these knucklehead schemes right before the midterms. Because those proposals were never going to go anywhere, and because these are not stupid politicians, it's almost - almost - as if they did it to cause conservative Republicans to lose.
Add to all that the fact that, when in power in the states, the GOP has never a lifted a finger to enact universal school choice. Nor to cut government spending, either on the state or federal level. They never took a wrecking ball to the federal education department, which they always loudly proclaim should be done. They never confront the corporate-military complex, or Big Pharma, either. Add to that the support for the Ukraine war by most congressional Republicans.
Most of the foregoing owe to the NeverTrumper wing of the party, we'll admit, but add to that Trump's own ongoing vociferous campaign for vaccines - after receiving $1 million in donations from Big Pharma, and well ...
And then, on top of everything else, comes the crowning blow last week: The leader of the actual conservative and anti-establishment wing of the party, Donald Trump himself, urged suspension of parts of the constitution so he could be declared president, or at least get a do-over of 2020.
What a frickin' cartoon show. But that's just what Trump advocated when he messaged: "So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great 'Founder' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!"
Before anybody leaps on the liberal bandwagon to have Trump drawn and quartered, let's just remember that, while Trump called for the constitution to be terminated, the liberals have been actively doing just that for almost three years - via a wholesale suspension of civil liberties during the pandemic, not to mention a massive censorship regime and a host of unconstitutional executive orders, from race-based discrimination to vaccine mandates to evictions to student loans.
That's what we have been fighting against as conservatives - fighting to defend constitutional integrity - and that's what makes Trump's pronouncement so discouraging. Even if the widespread fraud does constitute a national emergency, and it might, that's no cause to suspend the constitution.
U.S. Supreme Court chief justice Charles Evans Hughes put it this way in a 1934 decision, Home Bldg. & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell: "Emergency does not create power. Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the states were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency."
Whether Trump could ever actually suspend the constitution is irrelevant. Whether Trump is just running his mouth - the defense of Trump has always been, "pay attention to what he does, not what he says"-is irrelevant. Whether calling to suspend a document he has sworn to uphold is legally disqualifying is irrelevant.
What is relevant is that the man the fascist left loves to call a fascist in order to distract from their own true colors just admitted he is one. What is relevant is that no one who advocates suspending any part of the constitution of the United States can lead a legitimate mass political movement in the United States, much less one in which a central tenet is protecting and upholding that very constitution. Trump is certainly free to say what he thinks; the movement he leads is also free to choose another leader.
In a time when our civil liberties are so fundamentally threatened, we need a bold and passionate leader who will vow to fight at the barricades for those civil liberties, not to suspend them. If election integrity in this country is seriously compromised - and it is - then we need a leader who will wage a campaign to elect those who will fix the system and make it whole again, rather than campaign for new elections, banana republic style.
Fortunately those politicians abound already inside the party. There's Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, who are proof conservatives can win, and conservative activist lawyer Harmeet Dhillon is running to become chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. Conservatives should support her.
"The party has become a populist party," she said on Tucker Carlson this past week. "The base of the party demands populist messages that speak to them and not Chamber of Commerce messages, not neocon messages, not warmonger messages. And I'm afraid that the base of our party is not getting what it needs from our leadership."
She is right, the base is not. And until we rise up and vanquish for good the establishment of the GOP, until the flames of their final crash and burn light up the sky for all to see, once and for all, Republicans - and real conservatives - will continue to lose.
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