The
Contamination of the Republican Party
Rather than constructively reviewing the reasons
for losing control of the House, Senate and Presidency during the last four
years, the GOP has embarked upon a vindictive path* of creating election
barriers, obstructing people from registering, blocking voting accessibility,
voting record purges and blindly following the dictates of the cult of Donald
Trump. Rather than diagnosing the political
realities of the presidential defeat 2020 as any thinking leadership would do, the
party has ignored the treason of the January 6th invasion of the
capitol building of the United States, convinced the party will lead a majority
of the voters to believe the Great Lie. The destructiveness of this course
results in a party that struggles on a daily basis to find any semblance of a
loyal opposition to the Democratic Administration.
As this blog is posted, Liz Cheney,
three-term Wyoming Congresswoman, is voted out of her leadership position as
GOP conference chair of the House of Representatives by a voice vote (of all
things) simply because she refuses to believe the Great Lie, insists on the truth
and will not be a “Trumpster” even though she has been a loyal supporter in the
past. So, it appears the party of
Lincoln has a litmus test—agree with Trump or you are out. The contamination of the truth has evolved a
split in the ranks. Cheney states that
the party not only has abandoned the truth, but in doing so, Trump has become a
“threat”. He is a threat because he obstructs
the emergence of an open mind, so necessary to a convincing consensus.
The fixation by Trump on the Great Lie has
no end. Some 55% of his blog time since
November is focused on telling the Great Lie.
And a significant number of republican voters believe it. It is like insisting on changing the rules of
the Constitution. It would be like a
baseball team that lost the World Series declaring that they were the
winners. It is brain-washing on a gigantic
scale. It leads to speculation on how it will end. Is it possible that the cult can win in 2022,
led by a puppet master who is mentally ill?
Will the body politic re-elect a twice impeached former president? Is this the road to dictatorship?
But back to the contamination and focus on
the politicization of vaccines for instance. The Trump record on anti-science
and refusal to follow legitimate science leaders has sown the seed of hesitancy
toward covid-19 vaccination campaigns. And leads to anxiety for all of us. Kentucky Senator Ron Paul simply has no
regard for the truth and he is nasty in Senate hearings as well. Witness his
recent confrontation with Dr. Anthony Fauci over Wuhan Lab funding theory. Nasty leaders result in nasty followers. I believe it goes deeper that that. Nasty leaders represent nasty
constituencies.
The cult of personality that is Trumpism
did not suddenly start with the January 6th insurrection. It was more than evident in the Senate voting
on the two impeachments: the common denominator in the Republican voting
pattern was FEAR! The Republican strategy
is all about fear--fear of the loss of political power and that was more than
evident in those two votes. Those, and
the vote to cut taxes for the wealthy. Which
brings me to the last element of contamination of the party—money. Is Kevin McCarthy (R 23rd District
CA) following the cult because Trump is able to raise gobs of millions of
dollars in so-called dark money funding to use in any way he pleases which of
course means on candidates he anoints with the oil of cash?
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*Note: See the For the
People Act, the Democrats’ election reform bill, currently before the Congress.
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