.@POTUS: “The Republican Party is very, very unified.” https://t.co/vBPARhRl5cpic.twitter.com/L3jnCf5tpY
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 16, 2017
My list of Republican criticisms of President (in a few cases candidate) Trump just got a bit longer. David Weigel at the Washington Post has some zingers from members of the “Meeting of the Concerned”:
“Donald Trump is reshaping the heart of the GOP into something that is very dark and very diseased,” said [Rep. Bob] Inglis [R-SC]. “My nightmare scenario is a Republican Party that loses its soul. It’s one thing to lose an election. It’s another to lose your soul.”
“At some point, the Trump train’s going to come to a glorious wreck,” said [Rep. David] Jolly [R-FL], a two-term congressman and longtime Hill staffer who was narrowly defeated in 2016. “Who’s going to be there to pick up the pieces? I don’t think it’ll be the people who enabled him.”
Jerry Taylor, a co-founder of the libertarian Niskanen Center, said that Republicans “risked going into the history books as the party of treason” if they didn’t take action on Mueller. “Some of us feel that impeachable offenses have already been committed, and some of us are not sure,” Taylor said.
That last may not count: the article refers to Taylor as a libertarian, and I haven’t found anything that says he’s a Republican.
The group’s public statement includes this, with which I couldn’t agree more:
We would regard dismissal of the special counsel, or pardons issued preemptively to anyone targeted by his investigation, as a grave abuse of power that justifies initiation of impeachment proceedings.
Donald Trump promised to be a force for bipartisanship, and he has kept that promise. He has aligned me with people with whom I never thought I’d find common ground, people like Bob Inglis (“very dark and very diseased“), John Kasich (“just pathetic“), John Danforth (“hateful man“), John McCain (“That’s how dictators get started“), Lindsey fucking Graham (“completely unhinged“), and Rex Tillerson (“fucking moron“). I’m not sure that’s what Trump had in mind when he promised to be a “great unifier,” but I have no doubt that he’ll claim it as a win.
I think that the GOP lost its soul long before this. The 1920s red scare? the ‘screw-the-poor-we-must-balance-the-budget’ of 1930-31? the red-baiting and destruction of careers of the 1940s-60s? Goldwater’s campaign? the Southern strategy? embracing racism? pandering to the rich via supply side voodoo economics? the anti-anything-Clinton idiocy of the last 30 years? the embrace of the radical religious right to convince people to vote against their self-interest? the anti-everything version of conservatism in which, if a liberal/Democrat/centrist likes it, we must destroy it? the Fox News/Limbaugh approach to honesty, facts and reality? In my (useless) view, the GOP began down this road long ago.
The difference today is that the sober elite of the GOP has lost control. The ability of fear-mongers, liars, and opportunists to use the internet means that, after 90 years, the leaders of the GOP can no longer control the message. They can no longer egg on the McCarthy’s of the world while simultaneously working within the norms of government. They knew they could control the radical new-Nazis and, more important, use them for political gain. Now they can no longer control them. And Trump is the apotheosis of the bottom-up takeover of the GOP.
And it’s their own damned fault for following a power at any cost strategy. One of the ways to keep a check on the unhinged wing of the party is through elections, but thanks to all of their disenfranchisement shenanigans is that far-right Republicans can now run for office and win in places they normally wouldn’t if elections were fairly run.
Tabby:
Agreed.
The red states, the predominately rural states, the southern states, no longer have real elections. The only elections are the GOP primaries in which it is a race to position yourself further to the radical extreme fascist right than your opponents.