It’s not enough that Russian hackers are taking cities’ computers hostage. The GOP is ready to do it again with the country’s full faith and credit.
LOLGOP’s op-ed in USA Today examines the latest play by Republicans to again hold the country hostage over raising the debt ceiling, asking “How far will Republicans go to wreck the first term of a Democratic president?” That’s a rhetorical question. They did it 10 years ago:
Faced with a brutal recession, the new Republican House majority insisted it was ready to intentionally default on America’s debt for the first time in American history – unless Democrats agreed to trillions in spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit. Slashing social programs was the GOP’s No. 1 priority even as 14 million Americans were looking for work.
The result was a roller coaster off its tracks, barreling through the economy, setting off stock market shudders around the globe and triggering fears of a financial crisis even larger than the one that exploded in 2007. When the coaster eventually crashed, the United States saw the first-ever downgrade of its credit rating.
The GOP’s all-out political war dates back to “when Trump was still a gushing Hillary Clinton supporter,” Jason Sattler writes. “While the GOP definitely stepped up its disloyal opposition during the shutdowns of the Bill Clinton era, sabotage didn’t really become the organizing principle of the party until the election of the first Black president.”
Trump is a latecomer, even if a natural saboteur.
When first they show you who they are, believe them, etc. Post-insurrection and still arguing their Comb over King was cheated of his second term, Republicans are lining up behind their leaders, official and in exile, to sabotage the country yet again.
We must all learn the lesson we didn’t in 2011. Democrats who try to negotiate with a GOP that widely rejects the opposition party’s right to govern are only enabling Republicans’ destructiveness. You cannot even engage their threats. You can only defeat them by trying to save the country from their vicious combination of incompetence and vindictiveness.
That will take presidential stumping to pass both the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act “by whatever means necessary.” Sometime before this democratic republic winds up on a ventilator.
Update: Corrected one egregious misspelling.