The current state of the Republican Party is so shattered that items of news that would have rocked them or created havoc such as the Russian involvement in the 2020 election in favor of Trump and the Republican Party barely raises an eyebrow in the GOP caucuses. Not only is the GOP leadership fighting each other with a force that dwarfs their inane attacks on the Democrats they have lost any sense of direction and don’t even bother to represent their constituents in their legislative bodies. Currently the GOP believe it should be much easier to buy an AK rifle than vote. Trump who is a shadow of his former self is still in charge with McConnell flailing in the wind.
The Democrats seemed poised to attempt to bypass the filibustering one way or another so as to carry out their transformative agenda which by and large has the overwhelming support of the majority of the electorate. McConnell understands that would herald a decade at least of Democratic rule, threatening bedlam if the Dems try. Already Biden’s signature legislation the Covid relief bill has been wildly acclaimed and could be enough to keep the Senate and the House in 2022. The Republicans are making a great show of the border mess. If they are relying on Biden to indiscriminately open up the Southern border so as to give them a platform for something, they haven’t been watching or listening to him.
The GOP’s disparate actions and policies make it difficult to know what on earth their domestic and foreign policies are. They are however united on voting against anything the Democrats propose. Perhaps the most glaring domestic departure from being part of the USA is on how they view the insurrectionists who attempted revolution in the Capitol on January 6 and on the international front how they are backing Putin over Biden not caring too much about the definitive intelligence report that the Russians intervened in the 2020 election in favor of Trump and the Republican Party. Some of them are still arguing, with Trump, that Putin didn’t participate in 2016,
The dysfunction is such that the more Trump abuses his Republican “allies” the more they cringe and worship at his shrine
TRUMP STILL DOMINATES THE SHOW - THAT IS WHEN HE IS INTERESTED AND CAN GET MEDIA COVERAGE
Trump, who as an incumbent lost the Presidency and then the Senate with his crazy narcissistic display in Georgia, is still the most powerful force in the GOP shambles.The immediate Past President has said Republican candidates cannot use his likeness or name on their election material. He has also enjoined his followers to donate money to his Political Action Committees rather than to other Republican fund raising entities. The reason, he claims, for the latter is because money will be wasted on candidates who are Republicans in name only, (RINOS), or fools. The latter classifications just happen to belong to candidates who have opposed him in one or another way.
Just for a moment let this sink in. The party is so rudderless, lacking in real leadership or policy direction that a “loser” by his own definition is attempting to take control of all the coffers as well as solely nominate Republican candidates and there isn’t a combined response to tell him to go to hell. Or do they believe he can be trusted with the money and his judgement is divinely inspired? In any case at the moment he is locked in between playing golf and preparing for the load of litigation that is about to be dumped on his orange coiffure.
Trump has declared war on the Republican leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell. POTUS 45 has vowed to put up his own slate of candidates while McConnell has countered he is going to ignore him and back those that have the best chance of defeating Democrats in the 2022 midterms. McConnell’s behavior vis a vis Trump shows only one objective - clinging onto power. After four years of licking his boots and preventing his conviction twice he then launched into the most comprehensive attack as to Trump’s seditious behavior in inciting the January 6 insurrection. Less than a month later he stated that he would back Trump if he became the Party’s candidate in 2024. McConnell like everyone else in the GOP establishment has not presented a comprehensive policy plan for the party.
WHAT IS THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM?
The underpinning of their electoral strategy is voter suppression. Two hundred and fifty State legislature bills have been introduced by Republicans to make it more difficult for minorities to vote with Georgia being Ground Zero. Then there is the fact that Biden is “senile” and a “socialist”. (The latter assertion being made while they are supporting “socialist” Putin against him). The GOP opposed the nearly two trillion dollar Covid relief package which contains the first decent social welfare policies passed by American legislature in decades. The problem being for them that having passed an act costing a similar amount of money which was for tax cuts for the rich their cry of fiscal responsibility is hollow. More important is that the majority of the Republican electorate are now at odds with their elected representatives..
The GOP believe their best bet is being in favor of the old “culture”whatever that is while fighting “culture change” whatever that is. They are all id idem at keeping all immigrants out and making America white again. After all that is what got Trump elected in the first place.
With Biden’s election there has been a rush on the Southern border where the wall that Trump promised to build has not prevented mass illegal immigration. Where Biden’s stated policy differs from that of Trump is in the care of children and humanity not cruelty in dealing with the tragedy. With regard to illegal immigration he has made it quite clear that they should all “not come”. In order to stop the recent flood he has closed the border completely. Biden has sent representatives to Mexico and Guatemala to try and look for solutions at the source. Whether this chaos is a result of Trump or not it is Biden’s problem now.
For those Republicans that are interested they should examine the immigration policy of Biden in the Obama administration. The concern is with the treatment of the children, which is one of the principal reasons that the suburban Republican women deserted the GOP in 2018. Biden also backs a pathway, which again has a plurality of the electorate behind him, of regularizing citizenry for the children brought here, in most instances decades ago, by their parents. So good luck to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who makes regular trips to the border to view the "crisis" which Trump didn’t fix to make political capitol out of it. Needless to say he and McConnell have offered no plan to cope with the problem of children most of whom Trump locked up in cages.
Before continuing on the moral and policy bankruptcy of the GOP it would be wise to see what Biden is aiming to get through.
BIDEN’S AGENDA AND DEMOCRATIC PARTY COHESION
The seminal Covid legislation did not need sixty votes in the Senate to pass. Biden has on his plate legislation that would if the filibuster law remains in place require ten Republicans in the Senate to pass. He has as a priority to negate the voter restriction activities of the Republicans in the States with a sweeping Federal Law similar to Lyndon Johnson’s in the sixties which has since been castrated by the Conservative Supreme Court. He has two widely popular infrastructure bills which together with building a green energy source would provide the jobs that have been lost in the blue collar sector. In addition he has legislation which would change policing radically by making law enforcement part of the solution not the problem as seen by a large section of the Community. Following the alleged murder of George Floyd police accountability has become more of a front burner issue. The never ending agenda inludes incorcoprating Washington DC as the fifty first state which would give the Democrats two more Senators.
While he has already bolstered Obamacare in the Covid legislation he is looking to create an alternative Government plan for those who are still left without coverage. He has proposed as well a higher tax rate on those earning more than $200,000 a year and families more than $400,000 as well as a small increase in company tax. Then there are a shrove of bills which would fall under his New Deal effort which would be the most revolutionary since Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal”. Finally and for the millionth time, taking on the urgency of gun control.
Needless to say he could not muster one Republican vote, as matters stand, for any of the above. The problems everyone thought Biden would have had with his Progressive Caucus have not materialized. His difficulty lies with two Conservative Democratic Senators. This not with legislation but whether they will agree to dump the filibuster provision which as matters stand needs only fifty one votes to modify. What makes Jay H. Ell believe that something of that nature is on the way is that House of Representative Resolutions 1 and 4 have just been passed which inter alia stops voter suppression. Jim Clyburn the number three Democrat in the House has made it quite clear that his life long fights for Civil Rights are not going to be blown by this band of white supremacists. Just in case anyone forgets if it wasn’t for Jim Clyburn there woudn’t be a Joe Biden.
Biden's relationship with key conservative Democrat Joe Manchin who won in a state that Trump won by forty percent will be crucial in effecting his agenda,
REPUBLICANS - WHITE SUPREMACY IS NOW OK.
What has been so revealing is that while the majority of the Republican Party legislators are not racists or white supremacists they are not prepared to speak against those that are, especially their unchallenged leader Donald J Trump. It is not so long ago, two years in fact, that Representative Steve King was booted out of the Republican Party for his support of white supremacy and removed from his committee positions by his own caucus.
Two years later Majorie Taylor Greene was not sanctioned by the Republicans for her long standing string of racist, conspiratorial and seditious remarks which ranged from that the Speaker should be executed to the Parkland School shooting was a fake and attacking the young spokesperson survivor as a coward. It was left to the Democrats to axe her from her committee positions. Ms. Greene is one of the dozen or so Republicans that live in la la land. They stick to the “Big Lie” like cement and wouldn’t vote for granting the heroic Capitol police gold medals for their bravery because they claimed that January 6 was not an insurrection nor was the Capitol a “temple” of democracy.
Perhaps the racist statement of the century goes to Texas House Representative Chip Roy, who claimed that Texas was committed to justice as reflected in their old saying, “Find the tallest oak tree and find all the rope in Texas”. He was speaking in the debate on the Atlanta murder of Asian Americans. Again the Republican response was sparse at his obscene reference to lynching as “justice”. Asian - American spokespeople were audibly shocked as lynchings were perpetrated on the Chinese in the twentieth Century.
All this pales into insignificance at the behavior of Ron Johnson the Senator from Wisconsin. Johnson has claimed that the attack on the Capitol was executed by unarmed peace loving Americans. He initially subscribed to the theory that the whole operation was orchestrated by the left wing Antifa. Then followed that up by claiming that the white “rioters” did not create one bit of fear in him. Had they been Black Lives Matter resistors and Antifa that would have been an entirely different matter, he maintained. Johnson to this day is challenging the legitimacy of Biden’s Presidency. When he was Chairman of the Senate Homeland Committee he, in spite of negative intelligence reports, supported an investigation into Hunter Biden the Democratic nominee’s son. He also backed Trump on his playing down of the Corona virus epidemic and claimed, in spite of the medical evidence, that had they given everyone hydroxyquinolone, the President’s bizarre panacea, the epidemic would be over. He needless to say refuses to be vaccinated. It is a reasonable interpretation to believe that now that Trump is banned for life on Twitter for inciting a riot Johnson appears to be his ventriloquist dummy sitting on his lap.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
The GOP is dead and is being dominated by an authoritarian collection of racists, with Trump at the head. The current legislators have to make a decision as where to go with that reality. Currently they are in denial led by Mitch McConnell who sees “no change”.
The Democrats have tactical decisions to make so that they can continue with their transformative agenda. This includes changes to the archaic filibuster rule which makes governance impossible.
One has not heard the last word from Trump as he creates his own social media platform and his court cases begin to roll out.
One definitely hasn’t heard the last word on Trumpism as long as there are Johnsons, Cruzes, Hawleys and the dirty dozen in the House of Representatives, to mention but a few, hanging around and or voter suppression is allowed to triumph.
The Republican legislators, who are not comfortable with abandoning democracy, still can speak out and educate their constituencies. Relying on voter suppression and McConnell’s denial that there has been “no change” as well as being associated with the Trump authoritarian fringe, will forever place them on the rubbish dump of history.
America is obviously very much a work in progress.
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