It took the RNC leadership a decade to catch the T-party in losing its collective mind, but inevitably last week it got there. And then some.
In a column headlined “The RNC turns into an Orwellian horror show,” Jennifer Rubin wrote Monday (Washington Post):
The Republican Party has betrayed our democratic system — first by refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election, then by exonerating the violators and censuring the defenders of our Constitution at its recent meeting in Salt Lake City. The party time and again has sided with treacherous seditionists.
The Post’s Dana Milbank writes this Tuesday morning:
God bless those crafty wordsmiths of the Republican Party! The people who gave us “alternative facts,” “enhanced interrogation techniques,” “tender age shelters” and “hiking the Appalachian Trail” have outdone themselves.
The Republican National Committee last week passed a resolution condemning GOP Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) for serving on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection — or, as the RNC called it, “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
Legitimate political discourse! Seven people died in connection with the attack, 140 police officers were hurt and 734 people have been prosecuted on charges ranging up to seditious conspiracy. Marauders sacked the Capitol for the first time since the War of 1812, threatening assassination, and smashing, clubbing and defecating to the tune of $1.5 million in property damage. But the Republican Party says it’s all legit. Just a bit of civil discourse.
Perhaps the RNC is learning from Rep. Madison Cawthorn that saying offensive, lunatic things is really a good thing for all the earned media and clicks. But given the number of Americans down that rabbit hole with them, the question for Democrats and Americans still in possession of their faculties and souls is what the Republicans’ decent into madness means for November.
Both parties rank poorly in public opinion, John Cassidy begins at The New Yorker, writing, “According to the latest Economist/YouGov polling data, forty-one per cent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party and thirty-six per cent have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party.”
Yes, but what about November? Well, Joe Biden defeated Trump in such an environment. Biden’s own approval rating stood north of 50 percent until August, until the Afghanistan withdrawal, rising inflation, and the collapse of BBB.
Trump 2: The Revenge Tour could do for Democrats in 2022 what Trump: American Carnage did for them in 2018 and 2020.
Cassidy ponders:
Of course, Trump’s reëmergence doesn’t relieve the White House and the Democrats of the many policy challenges that they face—including inflation, the pandemic, and the Senate filibuster. Ultimately, they will be judged on their record in office, and an anti-Trump message won’t necessarily provide a political panacea. Terry McAuliffe’s defeat in Virginia illustrated the danger for Democrats of overly relying on the spectre of Trump when he is no longer in power. But Trump’s return to the headlines is an important development because it shifts some of the focus back to the G.O.P. and highlights the simple but defining question that the Party cannot avoid, as much as the Republican leaders McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, may want to. Does the G.O.P. still support democracy? Or is it now Trump’s sock puppet—an authoritarian populist movement eager to run roughshod over anyone or anything that gets in its way, including the votes that eighty-one million Americans cast for Biden?
The RNC’s “legitimate political discourse” declaration last week may not help. At least, not Republicans. A CBS News poll Cassidy cites shows 83 percent of Americans disapprove of the Jan. 6 rioters’ actions. Fifty-four consider it an insurrection.
Democrats need to give voters something to vote for this fall. They need to sell it, not just assume voters know they represent American values: e pluribus unum, democracy, renewal, prosperity, and sanity. Trump’s presence on the bottom of the GOP’s shoes (if he is not under indictment by the fall) will give Democrats and independents something to vote against without Democrats having to make a big show of it. Trump and Republicans will bring the show.
Trump’s reëmergence doesn’t guarantee anything. The antiquated American political system favors minority rule. Opposition parties usually do well in midterms, and this year’s electoral map favors Republicans. But the past week has highlighted the cancer that is still eating at the G.O.P. and reminded anti-Trump voters why it is so vital for them to get out and exercise their democratic duty—an important factor in a year in which Democratic strategists fear a decline in turnout. Coming in the same week that Omicron cases kept falling sharply and the January job figures came in unexpectedly strong, this has given Biden and other Democrats reason to hope that they can eventually get their ship back on course.
But making that happen will take a significant turnout among voters as sick of Trumpism as they are of Covid. They’ll need reminding.
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