The Grand Old Party has fallen and cannot get up. It is a black hole of conspiracies, racism, and lies. Quaint little terms and phrases like falsehoods and “passing acquaintance with the truth” no longer apply. Republicans love to deify the founding fathers until it is inconvenient. Collectively they have decided that pledging loyalty to men and not the country is the best way to drown America in Grover Norquist’s bathtub. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “[The] care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” Compare that to the words of former President Reagan, who said the most terrifying words in the language, along with declaring government the enemy, were the words, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Exacerbating the point were the words of Norquist, “ My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub,” and then required Republicans to sign a written oath to cut taxes.
Forget promoting the general welfare of the people; for Reagan Republicans, the pledge of the founders and the Declaration of Independence became a legendary rumor. Norquist has lost some clout, but there was always another Republican waiting in the wings, Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush’s campaign strategist and eventual Chief of Staff, most famous for the southern strategy. The younger Bush [George W.] had Karl Rove—Bush’s brain, whom Bush 43 labeled Turd Blossom; maybe ‘Dubya’ knew something we did not. Ultimately dirty tricksters like Roger Stone and Roger Ailes led us to the tiny hands of the promised drowner of the American baby, Donald John Trump.
On the heels of his predecessor, the ideal foil for white supremacy, black, educated, and confident, Trump lit a slowly extinguishing flame and built a roaring fire of hate, division, and distrust. He allowed his followers to pacify themselves with his thumb of lies and manipulated those in power with childish threats, name-calling, and mean tweets. Upon winning the presidency, he began to reverse 200 years of progress. So now Republicans cower behind women, children’s swings, and blackboards, whimpering as fading conservative icons like NRA leader Wayne Lapierre defend and promote the killing machines that have made shootings the number one killer of our children in America.
If it were not for the heart-wrenching deaths of six and ten-year-olds, teens, and the elderly, it would be funny to watch Republicans twist in the wind defending teenagers being allowed to buy weapons of war and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Literally, conservatives have promoted inhuman capitalism, child labor, dangerous working conditions, and working people to death. Fortunately, some GOP leaders were either overcome by scruples or decency that was too hard to avoid. Theodore Roosevelt fought for the rights of coal miners at the turn of the century, denying open oligarchy in America. Eisenhower warned of the “military-industrial complex.” Even Richard Nixon recognized the wise politics of protecting the environment when he started the EPA.
The GOP is now reduced to pols who fight unfettered capitalism by accusing tech kings of spiking our food and authoring bioterrorism to control the population. They are yearning for the reversal of voting rights and chastising women for daring to wear shoes in the kitchen, and wanting a choice from babies, diapers, and sour milk. Republicans would like to keep us in fear by convincing us we are more mentally ill and more violent, and we need them to save us from ourselves; when what we really are is broken because we have fallen off their walls of division, and they have no desire to put us back together again.
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