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August 29 - August 29, 2020
Neither of these men could win a primary for president in the current Republican Party. Decency, kindness, humility, compassion—all touchstones of a Christian faith—have no value in today’s Republican Party.
Instead of defending their convictions, they are providing preemptive absolution for their political favorites. And this, even by purely political standards, undermines the causes they embrace.
The Republican Congress now represents a party with very few significant defining principles other than the promotion of the president’s impulses at that moment.
The point of politics, as far as I could see, was to win, and when you were winning, what could possibly be wrong?
Everybody loves to spend more money, particularly when it’s seen as someone else’s money. It’s not a uniquely Republican addiction, but the blame falls to Republicans for being a breathtaking combination of hypocritical and unaware.
For every dollar Mississippians pay in federal income tax, the state receives just over $3 back from the federal government. More than 40 percent of Mississippi’s entire budget comes from Washington. Who pays for that? Those evil states like California and New York, where the good citizens pay a dollar in taxes and get less back from the government. Every time a New Yorker or Californian goes to work, he or she is helping build roads, hospitals, and schools in Mississippi.
“Welfare” is what the poor get because they are, well, poor, and being poor is a choice because in America anyone can succeed. Or something close to that. But “grants,” “tax breaks,” and “incentives” are the language businesses use to describe the corporate welfare they demand in exchange for doing what they usually have to do or want to do anyway, like build a new data center or factory or, in the case of sports, a new stadium.
the Republican Party continues to push tax cuts the same way the Roman Catholic Church uses incense for High Mass, as a comforting symbolism for believers that reminds them of their identity.
The American species (to the extent that there really is such a thing) is, of course, populist rather than conservative—and for a very forceful reason: America happens to be the only society in creation built by conscious human intent…and developed, by Europeans tired of Europe’s ancient commitments, and determined,…each in his own way, on a “new beginning.”
What I realized I was reading was an articulate, erudite evocation of the world as seen by Donald Trump.
Asking the Republican Party today to agree on a definition of conservatism is like asking New York Giants fans to have a consensus opinion on the Law of the Sea Treaty. It’s not just that no one knows anything about the subject; they don’t remotely care.
Stripped of any pretense of governing philosophy, a political party will default to being controlled by those who shout the loudest and are unhindered by any semblance of normalcy.
One of the hallmarks of the Trump era is the alacrity with which intelligent people embrace stupidity. As it was in Mao’s China with the Red Guard, it is a political crime in today’s Republican Party to appear well educated. So we find Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri tweeting a rant about “unelected progressive elites in our govt.”
Trump has staged a national Scopes Trial and placed himself in the William Jennings Bryan role. The question for the Republican Party is whether it is content to let the Democratic Party play Clarence Darrow. All indications are overwhelmingly yes.
“What would it take to get white Republicans in Alabama to support a Democrat? What if the Republican was a child molester?”
For decades a certain percentage of those who called themselves conservatives had been cultivating a country within a country, a sort of virtual secession from the United States of America.
The 1987 FCC decision to stop enforcing the fairness doctrine supercharged conservative media into a billion-dollar industry. Now there was no need to be concerned with offering equal time or performing a news function.
But what is mainstream media? It’s the journalism that believes in standards, strives to report facts, and has a professional standard to correct errors.
Justin, you know, going out publicly with that, you know the Democrats will never support you. You know that they’re hypocrites on this stuff. And I say, you know, some of them are and some of them aren’t. It doesn’t matter to me. Because you have to look at what you’re doing first. You have to care about what you’re doing. If you have a society where all we care about is that the other side is bad, and therefore we don’t have to do the right thing, that society will break down, and you will have no liberty. I refuse to be a part of that.
The American political process with its deep dependence on the need to raise money is a system designed not for the best governance but for the selection of the person who can put up with being humiliated the longest. Those with the lowest standards willing to grovel and beg are often the recipients of the greatest rewards.
Every presidential candidate stuck to that system until 2008, when Barack Obama, after routinely pledging to accept federal funding, realized how much money he could raise and decided to reject federal funding.
Trump was a disaster for the party and it would be better to lose one election than lose the moral mandate of a conservative movement.
the ghost of Franz von Papen haunts today’s GOP. If I could make every Republican elected official read one book, it would be the memoirs of Papen, the aristocratic chancellor of Germany who dissolved the German parliament and enabled Adolf Hitler to rise to power.
Legitimizing hate is like a war: it is easier to begin than to stop.
“The final test.” This is the language used to recruit suicide bombers, not a rational discussion of political choices in a civil society. The reality that so many Republicans feel the need to justify their support of Trump with these apocalyptic constructs is a telling indication of their desperate contortions to prove that doing what they know is wrong is in pursuit of some higher good.
In the Trump years, Republicans have sent a message that lying is useful and productive, racism is acceptable, the press is the enemy, and a strong-man authoritarian head of government is the ideal.
Each had a choice, and in overwhelming numbers these officials made a personal choice to support a man each knew was wildly unqualified to be president.
This was their moment to stand for something, and they chose to stand for reelection.
The obvious choice for the party was to expand its appeal beyond white voters. That diagnosis was as obvious as telling a patient with lung cancer to quit smoking. But at the same time, Republicans were taking steps to change the electoral math by making it harder for nonwhites to vote.
Whether they had a D or an R by their name meant less than having a big W by their name, W for “white.”
Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act, which made Jim Crow voter-suppression laws illegal, was the defining moment for the modern Republican Party. That year 93 percent of blacks voted for Lyndon Johnson, and the die was cast that has led the Republican Party to evolve into the predominantly white party it is today.
As a way of trying to justify voter-suppression steps, the Republican Party has invested heavily in the myth of voter fraud.
No one wanted this moral test, but most of my tribe have failed it.