I want to get one thing perfectly clear. The Republican party sucks. No ifs, and’s, or buts about it, they suck.
While I don’t doubt that there are many decent men and women in the Republican party, both as officeholders and activists, the party seems to be led by people who either don’t want to win or are misrepresenting themselves.
We don’t need the full history lesson about the GOP but recent events are important to consider. The main principle of the Republican party after World War II was anti-communism. The Democrats started out that way too but drifted left as the Cold War dragged on. Neither party was ideological in the way we think of them now but as the Democrats moved left, more people ended up as Republican by default. Conservatives, Christians, traditionalists, libertarians all ended up under one tent. Ronald Reagan famously commented that he didn’t so much move right as the Democratic party moved left and left him behind.
After Reagan engineered the defeat of the Soviet Union, one of the main pillars of the Republican party, the anti-communist one, no longer had a reason for being. During the 1980s and 1990s some clever Republican operative noticed that if they could have their candidates talk every other year about Jesus and small government and how abortion is bad, that the rubes would support them with campaign contributions and votes.
The topics would change to fit the needs of the moment but a few carefully placed key words and the party’s base would know that they had nowhere else to go. And so we experienced a John McCain who was against mass immigration, when he was running for office, and for mass immigration, when he was in office. We saw Mitt Romney run twice for the presidency as the most “severe conservative” in the race only to be the only Republican to vote with the Democrats on a sham impeachment of President Trump and endorse for president the Democrat with the most far left agenda ever put before the American people.
In the Congress we saw the performance art of the Paul Ryan House passing one symbolic repeal of Obamacare after another during Obama’s second term. They were symbolic because Obama’s veto was assured and there weren’t enough votes to override the veto. But Republicans assured us that they were legitimate votes. When the time came that a Republican president offered to sign the repeal, suddenly the Republicans weren’t sure if any of those dozens of repeals that they had passed just a couple of years earlier would really work. Amazing, right?
That they couldn’t just take one of those repeals off the shelf and pass it again spoke volumes about their honesty the first time around.
About the Obama era IRS scandal, or the attempted coup against Donald Trump, or the Steele Dossier, or the recent silencing of conservatives by big tech, the Republicans promise hearings. To be conducted at some point in the future, when no one is paying attention, where there will be no consequences for wrongdoing. Toothless showboating, but it does bring in those campaign contributions.
To say that this state of affairs is depressing is an understatement. Both parties do what they can to rile up their respective bases. It’s just politics and it’s cynical operatives do what they must to pump up their team.
So why, after this litany against Republicans, should you, or I, or anyone, support these people with our vote?
Because the other side is dangerous. That’s why.
Allowing the Democrats near power will accelerate the slide of the United States of America from the hope of the world, the shining beacon on a hill, to the depths of Third World despair.
As bad as Republicans are, they still tend to spend less, infringe on our liberties less, support useless government less. Whatever the Democrats want, the Republicans want it too, but less.
As a country, we need the breathing room of less. A slower slide will hopefully let us get our footing before we’re past the point of no return.
I’ve spent most of this piece complaining about Republicans, so in the interest of partially equal time here is a story about the Democrats. And why they shouldn’t be allowed near power.
As Obamacare was moving through the course in the House of Representatives the question of abortion came up. It was a sticking point for a group of conservative Democrats led by congressman Bart Stupak. They were uncomfortable with abortion funding in the bill. Stupak, along with a group of conservative Democrats and Republicans presented an amendment barring Federal funding for abortions. The congressman and his staff were harassed
by abortion advocates and a companion amendment did not pass in the US Senate. Stupak had to settle for the promise from President Obama of an Executive Order banning Federal funding for abortion in the act. The Affordable Care Act passed and Stupak did not seek re-election.
Those moderate, reasonable, conservative Democrats still caucused with the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. And after their votes for the leadership were counted, those moderate, reasonable, conservative Democrats became back-benchers in their own party. They had served their purpose and their power was gone. They were swamped by the leftist elements in their own party.
Republicans are not always as conservative or devoted to the well being of their constituents as they claim, but there are just enough office holders who will put the brakes on the worst of impulses of the statists and authoritarians among us to give us the breathing room we need to save this country.
Vote Republican! They suck, but less.