The end of the Republican Party
Flailing against public opinion on major issues, the GOP is out of step and running out of time.
By Renée Graham Globe Columnist,Updated April 11, 2023, 2:45 p.m.
It’s been said that a rat is never more dangerous than when it finds itself trapped in a corner. Facing defeat, that rodent won’t perish in docile resignation. Teeth bared, it will lunge at its target determined to inflict as much damage as possible, shrieking and snarling until its last ragged breath.
That’s the Republican Party — a rat in its death throes.
Rampant book banning. Efforts to defund libraries. Criminalizing doctors and teachers for doing their jobs. Black legislators expelled from the state legislature for demanding action on gun violence after a school shooting. Voter suppression. Parents of trans children threatened with having their kids taken away.
With a rotting white supremacist foundation, all Republicans have is anti-democratic election denialism and attacks on children, librarians, and history to distract from its failure to lead this nation anywhere but into the abyss.
After Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat, handily defeated Republican Dan Kelly last week in a crucial race for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, Scott Walker, a former Wisconsin governor, chalked up the stunning loss to young voters being subject to “years of radical indoctrination — on campus, in school, with social media, and throughout culture. We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again.”
Counter it with what? Instead of easing up, Republicans have tripled-down on their politics of hate, harm, and retribution. Then they wonder why an all-in embrace of authoritarianism isn’t appealing to Gen Z. And it’s not just young voters being lost.
In poll after poll, the GOP is on the wrong side of public opinion on abortion, gun control, and LGBTQ rights. In its rush to abandon democracy, the party is out of step and running out of time.
That’s because Republicans would rather ban drag shows and abortion pills. They’re preoccupied with pulling “The Diary of Anne Frank” from school shelves and requiring teachers to snitch to parents if their child uses a different name or pronoun at school instead of addressing real issues like gun violence.
After a mass shooter killed six people, including three 9-year-olds, at a Nashville school last month, Republican US House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, himself a gun violence survivor, said he prayed for the victims and their families.
But he added, “I get really angry when people try to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts.” Even when a motive is unknown, this fact is always known — in a nation with more guns than people, there have been more mass shootings than days so far this year.
Yet the GOP refuses to hear anything beyond the roar of their own ambitions. It will continue to cost them the power they so desperately seek. They know this, but have dug too deep into the murky depths of far-right ideology to see daylight any time soon.
So they didn’t push back at the incendiary rantings of the twice-impeached, one-term, now-indicted Republican former president at his recent campaign rally. Donald Trump spewed more than a usual medley of his greatest grievances. Even for the man who became the first president to use “carnage” in an inauguration speech, this was a dark vision of this nation’s future in which he referred to 2024 as “the final battle.”
Trump claimed “our opponents have done everything they can to crush our spirit and to break our will. But they failed. They’ve only made us stronger.”
That’s a fantasy for a party that has rarely looked weaker. While Republicans reclaimed the House in last year’s midterms, it was by a much smaller margin than predicted. And House Speaker Kevin McCarthy can’t control the Republican chaos caucus he empowered in exchange for the gavel, leaving the chamber he leads in a state of paralysis.
Instead, what Republicans are doing now is behaving like tenants who know their lease is running out and probably won’t be renewed. They’re breaking windows, kicking holes in the walls, and stripping out the copper fixtures.
The best they can do is stay silent as an antiabortion zealot and judge decides that he knows better than the Food and Drug Administration about the safety and efficacy of an abortion drug that’s been in use for more than 20 years. That’s not leadership. It’s cowardice, and voters should remember both the GOP’s stridency and silence.
That stridency — and the mayhem it could incite — will continue to increase. House Republicans want to bully and intimidate Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who indicted Trump. In Tennessee, Republicans expelled two Black Democrats to quell dissent against their legislative supermajority. (Justin Jones was reinstated Monday, and the same outcome is soon expected for Justin Pearson, his fellow state legislator.)
Under the weight of its obsolescence and incompetence, the Republican Party is collapsing. But like that cornered rat, they’re doing everything possible to leave whatever remains of our fragile democracy scarred and in ruins.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/11/opinio...ntentQuery
Flailing against public opinion on major issues, the GOP is out of step and running out of time.
By Renée Graham Globe Columnist,Updated April 11, 2023, 2:45 p.m.
It’s been said that a rat is never more dangerous than when it finds itself trapped in a corner. Facing defeat, that rodent won’t perish in docile resignation. Teeth bared, it will lunge at its target determined to inflict as much damage as possible, shrieking and snarling until its last ragged breath.
That’s the Republican Party — a rat in its death throes.
Rampant book banning. Efforts to defund libraries. Criminalizing doctors and teachers for doing their jobs. Black legislators expelled from the state legislature for demanding action on gun violence after a school shooting. Voter suppression. Parents of trans children threatened with having their kids taken away.
With a rotting white supremacist foundation, all Republicans have is anti-democratic election denialism and attacks on children, librarians, and history to distract from its failure to lead this nation anywhere but into the abyss.
After Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat, handily defeated Republican Dan Kelly last week in a crucial race for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, Scott Walker, a former Wisconsin governor, chalked up the stunning loss to young voters being subject to “years of radical indoctrination — on campus, in school, with social media, and throughout culture. We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again.”
Counter it with what? Instead of easing up, Republicans have tripled-down on their politics of hate, harm, and retribution. Then they wonder why an all-in embrace of authoritarianism isn’t appealing to Gen Z. And it’s not just young voters being lost.
In poll after poll, the GOP is on the wrong side of public opinion on abortion, gun control, and LGBTQ rights. In its rush to abandon democracy, the party is out of step and running out of time.
That’s because Republicans would rather ban drag shows and abortion pills. They’re preoccupied with pulling “The Diary of Anne Frank” from school shelves and requiring teachers to snitch to parents if their child uses a different name or pronoun at school instead of addressing real issues like gun violence.
After a mass shooter killed six people, including three 9-year-olds, at a Nashville school last month, Republican US House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, himself a gun violence survivor, said he prayed for the victims and their families.
But he added, “I get really angry when people try to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts.” Even when a motive is unknown, this fact is always known — in a nation with more guns than people, there have been more mass shootings than days so far this year.
Yet the GOP refuses to hear anything beyond the roar of their own ambitions. It will continue to cost them the power they so desperately seek. They know this, but have dug too deep into the murky depths of far-right ideology to see daylight any time soon.
So they didn’t push back at the incendiary rantings of the twice-impeached, one-term, now-indicted Republican former president at his recent campaign rally. Donald Trump spewed more than a usual medley of his greatest grievances. Even for the man who became the first president to use “carnage” in an inauguration speech, this was a dark vision of this nation’s future in which he referred to 2024 as “the final battle.”
Trump claimed “our opponents have done everything they can to crush our spirit and to break our will. But they failed. They’ve only made us stronger.”
That’s a fantasy for a party that has rarely looked weaker. While Republicans reclaimed the House in last year’s midterms, it was by a much smaller margin than predicted. And House Speaker Kevin McCarthy can’t control the Republican chaos caucus he empowered in exchange for the gavel, leaving the chamber he leads in a state of paralysis.
Instead, what Republicans are doing now is behaving like tenants who know their lease is running out and probably won’t be renewed. They’re breaking windows, kicking holes in the walls, and stripping out the copper fixtures.
The best they can do is stay silent as an antiabortion zealot and judge decides that he knows better than the Food and Drug Administration about the safety and efficacy of an abortion drug that’s been in use for more than 20 years. That’s not leadership. It’s cowardice, and voters should remember both the GOP’s stridency and silence.
That stridency — and the mayhem it could incite — will continue to increase. House Republicans want to bully and intimidate Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who indicted Trump. In Tennessee, Republicans expelled two Black Democrats to quell dissent against their legislative supermajority. (Justin Jones was reinstated Monday, and the same outcome is soon expected for Justin Pearson, his fellow state legislator.)
Under the weight of its obsolescence and incompetence, the Republican Party is collapsing. But like that cornered rat, they’re doing everything possible to leave whatever remains of our fragile democracy scarred and in ruins.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/11/opinio...ntentQuery
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