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The Republican Party’s empty husk

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 18, 2023

Values drag

Honestly, the headline summarizes well a column that tells us little we don’t already know, but let’s run with that: The Republican Party Has Devolved Into a Racket. But you knew that.

Professors Sam Rosenfeld and Daniel Schlozman make their case that “the G.O.P. has lost a collective commitment to solving the nation’s problems and become purposeless.” But you knew that too.

Trump, his Big Lie co-defendants, and Mitt Romney’s assessment of his Senate Republican colleagues marks a party “aimless … beyond the struggle for power and the demonization of its enemies.”

The pair include a walk down memory lane from the 1970s until the party was consumed with conspiracism and its “long provenance on the American right, reaching back to McCarthyism and the John Birch Society.”

The development of political parties was a mixed blessing, the pair admit. They help channel “individual ambition into collective public purposes.” Their structures provided another set of guardrails that on the right have broken down:

Parties organize political conflict — what the political theorists Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum term “the discipline of regulated rivalry” — but they also offer projects with visions, however blinkered and partial, for how societies should handle their challenges and build their futures.

Solving problems, improving people’s lives is no longer relevant on the right. Upholding democratic institutions and norms is gone. There are individual Republicans who retain a commitment to those and to public service, yes, but they exist alongside “a conspicuously missing party project.” What remains of the hollowed out GOP is simply a will to power and posturing about patriotism and family values that is simply marketing. Principles are marketing too.

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado is not a role model for anyone. But along with reality show luminaries such as Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, she has made herself a conspicious spokesperson for what her party claims to and doesn’t stand for.

A friend this morning sent over a Daily Kos post that cites a Daily Mail report on Boebert’s male companion in the photo above:

Now, DailyMail.com can reveal, that Boebert, 36, and divorced father of a 16-year-old son, [Aspen bar owner Quinn] Gallagher, 46, have been secretly dating for several months.

He is reputedly one of those Democrats politicians like Boebert publicly loathe.

DKos:

The Advocate was happy to point out that the bar owned by Boebert’s boy toy has hosted several LGBTQ+ events, such as a party for Aspen Gay Ski Week and a drag performance called “A Winter Wonderland Burlesque & Drag Show.” There were no age limits posted.

But then you knew that the right’s “values drag” is marketing too, as empty as their oaths to the Constitution. As if their embrace of Donald Trump and defense of his insurrection and attempted coup did not make that a slam-dunk case.

(h/t BF)

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