This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Tagged with: Republicans
Moreover, whether they truly believe this or are doing it for political reasons becomes less important with every passing day. If you perform ignorance, cult-membership, dishonesty and racism for half a decade, you become ignorant, part of a cult, dishonest and racist-and that is the plight of the Republican Party six months into the Biden presidency.
In the most recent conflict, it was Republican Christian voices who offered the most full throated and unequivocal support for Israel and corresponding lack of concern for Palestinians. The strongest pro-Palestinian voices, not surprisingly, came from left wing Democrats, but Jewish Democrats, including Nadler, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff and Congressman Adam Schiff offered more nuanced positions balancing concerns about Israeli security with Palestinian human rights.
The problem the GOP faces is not so much that Kevin McCarthy is not well liked, but that none of their attacks on Joe Biden seem to be particularly effective, so a proxy fight between Biden and McCarthy would be a win for the Democrats.
It is possible that it may just take more time for Trump and his supporters to fade away, but it is more likely that, even if the Democrats hold on to their majority in the House, Trumpism will further consolidate its hold on the GOP and continue to be a major and deeply damaging part of American politics for the foreseeable future.
The recent CPAC convention was the world’s first glimpse of the post-Donald Trump Republican Party and that glimpse made it clear the Republican Party is not post-Trump at all. Donald Trump’s speech on Sunday, which in tone, style and duration was very similar to one of his campaign rallies, capped off a weekend where it was made clear that fealty to Donald Trump, and the alternate reality that he created, is still the price of admission into today’s Republican Party.
Faced with overwhelming evidence that Donald Trump incited, encouraged and seemingly enjoyed the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, 43 of the 50 Republican senators voted to acquit the former president, making it clear that they did not think what Trump did was worthy of impeachment. There are only two reasons why those 43 senators voted to acquit Trump; either they were afraid of a primary from a Trump-backed opponent or they are true believers in what can perhaps best be described as the cult of Trump.
This coming acquittal, born of strong partisanship, combined with a president who, while in office, displayed no interest in democratic norms, fair elections and lawful conduct, has ripped a hole in the theory and structure of the Constitution. In short, we can either acquit Donald Trump or we can continue to have a Constitutional system that checks presidential power and protects our freedoms, but we cannot do both.
False equivalencies are like oxygen to the alternate realities, fealty to Donald Trump and affinity for angry conspiracy theories that now define the Republican Party.
he Republican Party facilitated Trump’s rise, enabled and supported his efforts to undermine American democracy and were overwhelmingly silent in the face of his crimes against the Constitution and the American people. If Trump wants to take the Republicans for yet another ride, one that will end earlier and uglier than the first one, it should not be the responsibility of the Democrats to prevent that.
From long before the first vote in the 2020 election was cast, it was apparent that Donald Trump was not going to leave office peacefully. The violence in Washington Wednesday is the direct result of Trump’s rants, threats, fantastical thinking and angry dishonest Tweets, not just since the election, but since he became a public figure. The people who stormed the capitol did so with more than a nod and a wink, more like a cheer and a thumbs up, not just from the president, but from his enablers-every single one of them, even those who in the last few weeks have sought to distance themselves from Trump.
The Republican Party is faced with a quandary about whether or not to rally around the president and become complicit in his most egregious efforts to undermine democracy. The argument for doing this is that Trump may just succeed and remain in office after January of 2021. If this happens, the Republicans will buy a few more years in power and a few more years of not being held accountable. However, by backing up the president now the Republicans would also put themselves at risk of, politically speaking, jumping on the Titanic just moments before it hits the iceberg.
Donald Trump has acted exactly as we could have expected. He has been overmatched by the complexity of the problem, has seen this as a personal attack on him, doled out dangerous advice, ranted and Tweeted rather than offer helpful solutions and has called for shutting the borders long after the virus has become widespread here in the US. Trump’s narcissism, venality, unwillingness to learn anything and abject incompetence have combined into a perfect storm that has contributed to the spread of false information, made it extremely difficult to get tests for the virus and endangered the safety of every American. The presidential administration in general has focused not on solving the problem but on reacting to the president’s outbursts while simultaneously seeking to conceal the extent of his incapacity.
