“You can’t be serious!”
--John McEnroe
The latest from the Republican National Committee (RNC), the outfit that claimed that the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was “legitimate political discourse:” the loyalty pledge required of all Republican presidential candidates if they want to climb onto the debate stage now has an addendum, per the Republican National Committee. They must promise to support the Republican nominee in the general election, even if he is a convicted felon.
Candidate Asa Hutchinson asked the RNC to amend its loyalty pledge to give a pass to him and his competitors in the event the nominee is assessed to be a criminal. No go, said the RNC. Doesn’t matter if the nominee’s a crook.
Every time we think the 2020s version cannot possibly sink any lower or be even more disrespectful toward and dismissive of democracy and the rule of law, the RNC proves us wrong. I cannot understand why they persist in calling themselves “Republicans” when it is clear that they don’t believe in a republican (small “r”) form of government. They are the real RINOs.
RNC Chair Ronna (“Don’t Call Me Romney”) McDaniel, who is closing in on close to a decade’s worth of leading her party to resounding electoral losses, is the bumbling Svengali behind these efforts at shocking the conscience of humanity. Grandpa George Romney, who when he was governor of Michigan marched with Martin Luther King, must be spinning like a top in his grave. Put a pair of specs on Ronna and she morphs into Lauren Boebert, another like-minded champion of neo-fascist know-nothingism.
So it has come to this: the Republican Party no longer gives a flying hoot about democracy or its guardrails. Donald Trump has effectively seen to that. The RNC has cast its lot with the alternative fact universe in which Trumpworld wallows.
There is a lot of speculation about what would happen to the Republican Party should it ever be able to divest itself of Trump and the Trump stench that has corrupted American politics for almost a decade. Media optimists believe that it will return to its mainstream conservative roots.
Don’t bet on it. All of the linkages between the historic Republican Party and its current iteration have been severed completely. Ronald Reagan and Bushes 41 and 43, despite occupying the hard right, would have no chance of being nominated by today’s GOP. There is no prospect that the party will somehow magically revert to what it was before Trump and his minions assumed the reins. That ship has sailed.
Trump is not the only Quisling that Republicans acclaim. Just days after the RNC proclaimed lawbreaking to be a presidential prerequisite, candidates DeSantis and Pence vowed that should they be elected president, they would exhume Confederate General, traitor and owner of more than 100 slaves, Braxton Bragg, and relabel Fort Liberty (the former Fort Bragg) with its original name.
Oh, and one other thing: many of Trump’s Republican presidential rivals have declared that, if president, they would consider pardoning the wretch.
Unfortunately, there is no mechanism available to ban a party that has lost all justification for continued existence. The only way to get rid of this pestilence is the vaccine of the vote. They must be trounced up and down the ballot if we are ever going to reclaim the America that we thought we had locked in. Anything less and this menace to society will continue to drag us down the road to ruin.
Dick Hermann
June 26, 2023
--John McEnroe
The latest from the Republican National Committee (RNC), the outfit that claimed that the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was “legitimate political discourse:” the loyalty pledge required of all Republican presidential candidates if they want to climb onto the debate stage now has an addendum, per the Republican National Committee. They must promise to support the Republican nominee in the general election, even if he is a convicted felon.
Candidate Asa Hutchinson asked the RNC to amend its loyalty pledge to give a pass to him and his competitors in the event the nominee is assessed to be a criminal. No go, said the RNC. Doesn’t matter if the nominee’s a crook.
Every time we think the 2020s version cannot possibly sink any lower or be even more disrespectful toward and dismissive of democracy and the rule of law, the RNC proves us wrong. I cannot understand why they persist in calling themselves “Republicans” when it is clear that they don’t believe in a republican (small “r”) form of government. They are the real RINOs.
RNC Chair Ronna (“Don’t Call Me Romney”) McDaniel, who is closing in on close to a decade’s worth of leading her party to resounding electoral losses, is the bumbling Svengali behind these efforts at shocking the conscience of humanity. Grandpa George Romney, who when he was governor of Michigan marched with Martin Luther King, must be spinning like a top in his grave. Put a pair of specs on Ronna and she morphs into Lauren Boebert, another like-minded champion of neo-fascist know-nothingism.
So it has come to this: the Republican Party no longer gives a flying hoot about democracy or its guardrails. Donald Trump has effectively seen to that. The RNC has cast its lot with the alternative fact universe in which Trumpworld wallows.
There is a lot of speculation about what would happen to the Republican Party should it ever be able to divest itself of Trump and the Trump stench that has corrupted American politics for almost a decade. Media optimists believe that it will return to its mainstream conservative roots.
Don’t bet on it. All of the linkages between the historic Republican Party and its current iteration have been severed completely. Ronald Reagan and Bushes 41 and 43, despite occupying the hard right, would have no chance of being nominated by today’s GOP. There is no prospect that the party will somehow magically revert to what it was before Trump and his minions assumed the reins. That ship has sailed.
Trump is not the only Quisling that Republicans acclaim. Just days after the RNC proclaimed lawbreaking to be a presidential prerequisite, candidates DeSantis and Pence vowed that should they be elected president, they would exhume Confederate General, traitor and owner of more than 100 slaves, Braxton Bragg, and relabel Fort Liberty (the former Fort Bragg) with its original name.
Oh, and one other thing: many of Trump’s Republican presidential rivals have declared that, if president, they would consider pardoning the wretch.
Unfortunately, there is no mechanism available to ban a party that has lost all justification for continued existence. The only way to get rid of this pestilence is the vaccine of the vote. They must be trounced up and down the ballot if we are ever going to reclaim the America that we thought we had locked in. Anything less and this menace to society will continue to drag us down the road to ruin.
Dick Hermann
June 26, 2023
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