Skip to content

Republicans can’t govern, don’t want to

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 25, 2023

No intervention in sight

H. L. Mencken is not around to see history confirm his bleak, 1926 assessment of public wisdom. But nearly one hundred years later, his observation suggests that the mania of our age is not unique to it. Unlike Mencken, however, we are cursed today with having to live through it. Trumpism needs an intervention, but there is none in sight.

The leading Republican presidential candidate for 2024 has no use for nor interest in learning what the Constitution says. Just elect him so he can again make a mockery of swearing an oath to uphold and defend it and be about pardoning himself for his federal crimes and wreaking vengeance on all enemies domestic and domestic. Especially on those who would dare prosecute him for crimes his presidential pardon cannot reach. Donald Trump thinks the Preamble begains, “ME the People.”

What would a Trump 2.0 administration look like? Marcy Wheeler invites us to gaze upon the Republican Party in her former state. “I really wish people would start comparing what has happened to the MI GOP in the wake of their capitulation to Trumpism, as compared to the GA GOP, which stood up to it,” she posts to formerly Twitter. Wheeler cites a Detroit Free Press account of the latest state Republican meet-up (pay wall):

The audience rose in a standing ovation Saturday when Michigan Republican Party Chair Kristina Karamo was introduced to deliver a “dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence” before a Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference unlike any other.

An hour later, Karamo stepped to the podium again to tell the conference that Darwin’s theory of evolution is a fraud and a hoax and that man was created in his present form by God, but that leftists cling to evolutionary theory because when children are taught that one part of the Bible is false, they are more inclined to also question its other teachings.

This is the doctrine of biblical literalism evangelicals discovered in the wake of Darwin. Instead of insisting that their holy scripture is a book of faith, they downgrade it to science text. But I digress.

Paul Egan reminds readers that Michigan Republicans had their butts handed to them in 2022, losing both the state House and Senate. Conference attendance this year was down. National GOP figures declined to attend. Nor did corporate sponsors kick in. The atmosphere was of unity. But it was mainly “unity by subtraction,” Egan notes.

Only two of Michigan’s six Republican members of Congress were in attendance, and U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, faced some minor heckling during his session with U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Midland, after Walberg referred to the U.S. as a democracy.

“Constitutional democracy — we’re not a democracy,” a woman shouted.

You get the idea.

Karamo, who took office in February, has faced criticism over alleged interference in the business of county parties and handling of party finances. She said Saturday rumors of her pending resignation are false and her internal detractors can “pound sand.”

Which is the kind of non-governance the GOP and Trump offer the country. The Party of Trump is opposed to expanding the voting pool, Greg Sargent notes. Democracy : bad.

“I mean this sincerely. If one of the virtues of right wing populism is that it has subterranean majoritarian appeal that’s being suppressed by liberal elites, then why aren’t the right wing populist thinker types in favor of making voting easier?” Sargent adds. You know why.

A Trumpist GOP that postures hollowly about family values has no use for governing. It is prepared yet again to shut down government and services Americans depend on if it cannot muster the votes to work its will. The party proves day after day that its only interest is in increasing and maintaining its ability to dictate. Their invocation of freedom is a cruel joke. The country they would mismanage would be the global joke Trump fears he himself is.

Published inUncategorized