The end of the Republican Party: Flailing against public opinion on major issues, the GOP is out of step and running out of time.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
It’s been said that a rat is never more dangerous than when it finds itself trapped in a corner. Facing defeat, that rodent won’t perish in docile resignation. Teeth bared, it will lunge at its target determined to inflict as much damage as possible, shrieking and snarling until its last ragged breath.
That’s the Republican Party — a rat in its death throes.
Rampant book banning. Efforts to defund libraries. Criminalizing doctors and teachers for doing their jobs. Black legislators expelled from the state legislature for demanding action on gun violence after a school shooting. Voter suppression. Parents of trans children threatened with having their kids taken away.
With a rotting white supremacist foundation, all Republicans have is anti-democratic election denialism and attacks on children, librarians, and history to distract from its failure to lead this nation anywhere but into the abyss. After Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat, handily defeated Republican Dan Kelly last week in a crucial race for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, Scott Walker, a former Wisconsin governor, chalked up the stunning loss to young voters being subject to “years of radical indoctrination — on campus, in school, with social media, and throughout culture. We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again.”
Counter it with what? Instead of easing up, Republicans have tripled-down on their politics of hate, harm, and retribution. Then they wonder why an all-in embrace of authoritarianism isn’t appealing to Gen Z. And it’s not just young voters being lost. In poll after poll, the GOP is on the wrong side of public opinion on abortion, gun control, and LGBTQ rights. In its rush to abandon democracy, the party is out of step and running out of time. That’s because Republicans would rather ban drag shows and abortion pills. They’re preoccupied with pulling “The Diary of Anne Frank” from school shelves and requiring teachers to snitch to parents if their child uses a different name or pronoun at school instead of addressing real issues like gun violence.
After a mass shooter killed six people, including three 9-year-olds, at a Nashville school last month, Republican US House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, himself a gun violence survivor, said he prayed for the victims and their families.
But he added, “I get really angry when people try to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts.” Even when a motive is unknown, this fact is always known — in a nation with more guns than people, there have been more mass shootings than days so far this year. Yet the GOP refuses to hear anything beyond the roar of their own ambitions. It will continue to cost them the power they so desperately seek. They know this, but have dug too deep into the murky depths of far-right ideology to see daylight any time soon.
So they didn’t push back at the incendiary rantings of the twice-impeached, one-term, now-indicted Republican former president at his recent campaign rally. Donald Trump spewed more than a usual medley of his greatest grievances. Even for the man who became the first president to use “carnage” in an inauguration speech, this was a dark vision of this nation’s future in which he referred to 2024 as “the final battle.” Trump claimed “our opponents have done everything they can to crush our spirit and to break our will. But they failed. They’ve only made us stronger.” That’s a fantasy for a party that has rarely looked weaker. While Republicans reclaimed the House in last year’s midterms, it was by a much smaller margin than predicted. And House Speaker Kevin McCarthy can’t control the Republican chaos caucus he empowered in exchange for the gavel, leaving the chamber he leads in a state of paralysis.
Instead, what Republicans are doing now is behaving like tenants who know their lease is running out and probably won’t be renewed. They’re breaking windows, kicking holes in the walls, and stripping out the copper fixtures. The best they can do is stay silent as an antiabortion zealot and judge decides that he knows better than the Food and Drug Administration about the safety and efficacy of an abortion drug that’s been in use for more than 20 years. That’s not leadership. It’s cowardice, and voters should remember both the GOP’s stridency and silence.
That stridency — and the mayhem it could incite — will continue to increase. House Republicans want to bully and intimidate Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who indicted Trump. In Tennessee, Republicans expelled two Black Democrats to quell dissent against their legislative supermajority. (Justin Jones was reinstated Monday, and the same outcome is soon expected for Justin Pearson, his fellow state legislator.)
Under the weight of its obsolescence and incompetence, the Republican Party is collapsing. But like that cornered rat, they’re doing everything possible to leave whatever remains of our fragile democracy scarred and in ruins.
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They have all the time they needed, more than two years now, and are wasting it.
What has the Republican Party been since Jan 6th 2021 but a mess, subservient to a mentally ill and deranged wannabe authoritarian?
What kind of headlines do they make? Defunding libraries? Denying medical care to pregnant women? Subpoenaing local district attorneys? Attacking the FBI ?
Where is the winner in these concepts?
The Red Wave that was only a ripple should have been a warning, but heed it they have not, and perhaps they have overestimated any benefit they might glean from the MAGA base and the Trump anchor.
Really wading into and off the deep end here with the rhetoric!
More of a running jump into a cannonball landing.
Yep
Turns out hateful and backwards are not winners!
More voters leave as the gop goes all wackadoo...
What is this the 100th time some far leftist unhinged loon has written off the Republican Party?
So long as Democrats have an overwhelming ability to fuck everything up they touch there will be a Republican Party.
We only have a two party system. Once voters get tired of high inflation; crime; high gas prices; foreign endless wars; two tier justice; and an economy continuously on the brink of all out collapse- Republicans will be voted back into power. Until they fuck it up.
Democrats are trying to break the two party system by weaponizing the IRS, FBI, and DOJ against their political opponents. They are trying to federalize election laws and make people more powerful than voters. They are even trying to pack the Supreme Court to ensure it rules in their favor.
If Democrats ever succeed in their quest for one party rule- this country will be over. We will not survive the DNCP.
The Republican Party today is much farther right than the Democrats are left.
I think the "Freedom Caucus" , the group of far right GOP House members , was the start of the Republican Party's slide into craziness. It was and is filled with birthers, election deniers, white grievers, crackpots and yahoos. Such people have no chance of being a convincing and cohesive force for good, yet they continue to control the ideology of the sinking party.
Only to those that think the Squad aren't far left.
Again ignoring the Squad and the entire "Get Trump at all costs" TDS driven morons in the House and Senate that conducted not one but two impeachments that shut Republicans out of the process. Not to mention the entire Jan 6th investigation. When it comes to crazies; that is the norm for Democrats.
So you think that Trumps many crimes should just be ignored?
That's crazy!
Sad pathetic attempts at wish fulfilment by some on the hard core liberal left.
Only in reactionary Bizarro World.
It takes a deep understanding of the reactionary mind to be able to parse that one.
Good thing the Republicans with their cadres in the so-called Federalist Society haven't been trying to stack the courts for a few decades. We're lucky the know-nothings Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett and Roberts weren't stacked into the Supreme Court to ensure it rules in the lunatic fringe's favor, right?
Did you mean today? Then yeah. About that.
Nice article. I like fiction
All actions aimed at controlling or silencing people they don’t like - and then they have the nerve to complain about cancel culture.
You think Republicans are the only ones banning books?
As compared to efforts to use the IRS, FBI, and DOJ against their political enemies. To end parents rights over their children's education; and even control of their bodies. Criminalizing religion through the courts; and laws.
Thank you for repeating that bullshit. They were expelled for inciting an insurrection. They violated House rules. All three should have been expelled; and would have been but they were aa few votes short on the last. Seems using a blowhorn is what put the two over the top. Don't worry the commission is putting both back in place- nothing fucking learned for any of them. They received their 15 minutes of fame. Imagine if any Republicans had done what they did- Garland would have them imprisoned waiting on charges so fast their lawyers wouldn't have time to react.
Fucking prove it! Common prove the damn claim- you quoted it- so prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. The Georgia voter suppression turned out to be so much damn BS.
Again fucking prove it. It is easily proven that schools are trying to coerce children into transiitioning- and want parents left out of the decision.
As if Democrats aren't engaging in the same damn thing. Seems that leftists don't like it when the right engage in their own cancel culture. Ask Budweiser about it. They can give you 5 billion reasons and growing.
Not only did I not say that - you are quoting the article, not me.
Still quoting article
I didn’t repeat. I responded to it.
Should they? Based on what? Your deep knowledge of Tennessee House rules and precedent? Or your feelings?
Just because someone does something in violation of the rules, that does not mean the harshest punishment is the just response. It has become a new religion on the Right to claim that elections are fraudulent and the will of the people is being thwarted. They said the same thing each time the House impeached Trump. So you’d think conservatives would be all about respecting the will of the people. But first chance they get, they toss out two duly elected representatives - and not for something like “high crimes and misdemeanors” but for violating a rule made up by the House.
Already this week, the people those two men represented have returned them to their positions. Will conservatives acknowledge the will of the people? Or will they whine and complain?
Not “as if” that, at all. Pointing out someone’s behavior in now way says that someone else doesn’t do something similar. Your logic here is flawed.
“They do it, too” isn’t very illuminating, either. Certainly, either side is capable of wrong behavior, but so what? The article isn’t about that. Maybe you should seed something.
You finally quoted me! Amazing!
First, I’m no leftist. Second, my statement was to point out the hypocrisy. Conservatives have been whining like little girls about cancel culture, and sometimes they’re right to object. However, if they had integrity on this issue, they wouldn’t turn around and do the same thing, but way worse, especially using the power of government.
Unfortunately, with politics, these choices are usually about tribalism, and rarely about principal.
I can't count how many times I have heard that prediction made and still hasn't come to pass. I am filling this one right next to the one where Hillary Clinton wins the 2016 election.
The GOP hasn't done well for some time. Even in 2016 fat shit only won by a handful of votes in a select few states and lost the popular vote. Since that victory over the worst possible dem candidate, the GOP has just racked up losses. And not only have they not changed course, they have signed a suicide pact with the poison pill that is Trump.
The Dems are PRAYING that Trump is the 2024 nominee. He is easily their best route to reelection because the majority of Americans already hate him, and his entire campaign will be nothing more than bitching and whining about how unfair things are for him and how everyone is out to get him. With a GOP Trump nomination Biden doesn't even have to campaign, he just has to keep doing president stuff and he will win.
Eeeking out victories in races that should be a slam dunk isn't a win, its a sign of trouble ahead. 2024 is shaping up to be another bad election cycle for the GOP.
Hah, okay dude, okay.
According to most his nomination would be the only route to reelection. If Biden is the democrats nominee again, anyone in the assisted living facility I live in will win the election ( most just in the basis of them being much younger and clearer thinking than him, even the dementia patients.
The GOP's problem is that they have completely abandoned the idea of having a vision outside of themselves with a ball gag and Trump standing over them with a whip. That is the GOP's current platform.
Oh yeah, and try to fuck over women and minorities as much as possible just because.
I just don't get it. Sure the culture wars bullshit plays well with their most hardcore idiot base, but is an overwhelming loser amongst the general public. Same with Trump. Sure the idiot base loves him, but the majority of the public hates him and would rather vote for a guy campaigning out of his basement. Their treating the house majority as a revenge tour on Trump's behalf is another example. This is a party that is completely void of any ideas or really any interest in actually governing.