Discussions of the future of the GOP seem to be polarizing:
- They lead a right wing movement that is growing stronger and may soon overwhelm us.
- They are a dead party.
The thing is, there’s a lot of truth on both poles of this analysis. I have nothing to say to refute either assessment.
However, I do think it’s important to see the split reality we face in today’s GOP. I think it is dying, but I could easily see it recovering. Fortunately, our leaders are wielding the weapon that could finish it off: forcing the warring wings of the GOP to face off publicly in divisive vote after vote after vote.
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I think of the GOP as a dying star in the Red Giant phase: massively expanding preparatory to collapse. A Red Giant is dying but it can do a lot of damage while the fuel holds out.
The good news is that, in our sick nation, its potential for destruction is, in my opinion, limited by the colossal indolence of the American people, including its lunatic fringes. I have a great deal of faith in the lazy complacency of the American people. Most of our wingers think and act in the context of media fantasies, and they can imagine little worse than getting off their couches.
A huge reason for this is the fact that their entire driving force is fueled by fears composed of sheer fantasy. White males in today’s America are in no real sense threatened. They just imagine they are.
For me, this has always been something to remember about our Right Wing. It indeed emulates the Nazi Party. But there is a huge difference. The Weimar Republic had just lost millions of its people to a senseless war which it lost in humiliating fashion and its economy was a shambles due to the demands for war reparations imposed by the Allies and a global economic crisis. And it had just endured the Spanish flu. Please do not for a minute think I am excusing or defending it. I deeply abhor Fascism. I am merely saying that the German people of the 1930s faced staggering realities.
Which makes our home-grown neo-fascists even worse. They have concocted a populist revolution responding to … movie-of-the-week catastrophe scenarios. Of course, working people aligned with today’s right wing do have a legitimate beef—the dismantling of the their economy—and Trump did tie in to that. But the driving vision of the Right Wing pays no attention to the capitalists and focuses on racism and sexism. And there is simply no reality to the fear that white male privilege is anywhere close to collapse. They are rising up to fight an enemy that doesn’t exist.
So, OK, what then? I would remind my sisters and brothers that sustaining a political fantasy like this consumes resources. It is ultimately unsustainable. The whole bloated, corrupt enterprise could not survive COVID. Nor can it survive the inexorable crush of climate change + the economic transformations driven by green technological innovation. The Giant Red Star is leaking fuel and starting to collapse.
Which means what? My read is that we have an opportunity here. But only that. No more.
Mitch & Co. are feverishly working to re-formulate the party with fresh fantasies. There is clearly a split in the GOP, but that split has always been there. Give these creeps a couple of years to re-orient the propaganda and they could well succeed in getting the lunatic fringe back in line. I could easily see that happening. And the Lincoln Project will be part of that effort at re-branding the same old exploitive game.
There is only one way to decisively break the GOP coalition. That is to keep driving the wedge between the fringe and the mainstream creeps. (They’re all creeps.) We have to keep the pressure on to force the two wings of this evil cabal to contend with each other. Right now, the GOP is back on its heels, uncertain about how to go on. But this moment is not enough. Let it off the ropes and it WILL re-formulate and recover.
THE GOP IS NO DEAD. NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE. ZOMBIE-LIKE, IT KEEPS STAGGERING ALONG SEEKING BRAINS TO DEVOUR. NO FUNERAL WREATHS OR TOMBSTONE MARKERS. NO SPIKING THE BALL--WE’RE STILL ON THE 35 YARD LINE. WE AREN’T HOME YET AND THE BODY IS NOT YET A CORPSE!
However. The body is rotting and festering. It can be killed. But only by pounding away on that wedge.
And you know, for the first time in my lifetime, my party is in the saddle, cutting left and right with a razor-sharp saber: votes on the floor that the Thugs won’t able to duck.
Are you going to exonerate Trump? That racist woman in the House? Are you going to oppose the COVID relief package. DACA? Voting rights? And on through the list of legislation the American people want. The choice?
- Join the Democrats in governing well and get primaried by lunatics.
- Obstruct and piss off the American people, watching your base shrink to unsustainable size.
- Fail to get in on the chance to save the day and be left behind.
As long as we Dems keep up the pressure, we drive the wedge in deeper and deeper. And that’s what’s really key here. The electorate’s memories are short, but its hatreds live on. Force these people again and again to oppose each other: mainstream thug v fantasy-fed loony. Make them go on the record again and again, pouring gasoline on the fire of that internal vision. Cultivate their hate and it will live on for years and decades.
Today’s GOP was built to thrive on paranoid hatreds. We have a chance to cultivate the hatreds within its sick coalition. Go, Dems. Keep driving them. Keep slashing with that saber. It’s the best chance we have had since the early 60s to fracture that cabal of greed and paranoia.
But let up … let the pressure drop, and the corpse will come off life support stronger than ever.
I have never been a fraction as proud of my party as I am right now. Biden is getting me excited and even Schumer is … almost … inspiring.
But you know for 50 years I have had my heart broken again and again by the Democratic Party . I keep wondering if they’ll slip back into the lethargy of the past …
The GOP is not dead, but we are sawing at its jugular and WE CAN KILL IT IF WE KEEP UP THE PRESSURE! Go Joe. Go Nancy. Go Chuck. Strike again and again and again ...