GOP Goal is to Kill Off the Democratic Party Once and For All
There is no easy way to stop a major party that’s intent on destroying democracy.
The venom begat by then-Congressman Newt Gingrich back in the nineties is now spreading through the vital organs of democracy.
What once was a process of opposing views finding ways to compromise on policy (sometimes–there were third rails) has become a quest to see who can shout the loudest and most vile accusations.
This is no accident, even with routine things like naming a post office,as this quote from Charles P Pierce shows:
With little notice and nothing more than a 23-year-old news clipping, a right-wing, first-term congressman mounted an 11th-hour effort on the House floor to persuade his colleagues that Judge Hatchett, a trailblazing judge who broke barriers as the first Black State Supreme Court justice south of the Mason-Dixon line, was undeserving of being honored. The objector was Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia. Shortly before the House vote, he began circulating an Associated Press article from 1999 about an appeals court decision that Judge Hatchett wrote that year that struck down a public school policy allowing student-approved prayers at graduation ceremonies in Florida. The decision, which overruled a lower court, held that the policy violated constitutional protections of freedom of religion.
In other words, the Republicans in the House killed a bill that would honor a true pathfinder because, as a judge, he enforced the First Amendment. They did so in order to mollify the same idiot rookie who referred to the January 6 insurrectionists as an “ordinary tourist group.” Expect a lot more of this ass-showing if the Republicans take over the House in the fall, and don’t expect Kevin McCarthy to do anything about it whether he’s speaker or not.
Democrats in this period of history (they have their own skeletons) have gotten sucked into the process because the crafted barbs of their GOP get media coverage; it doesn’t matter whether the coverage is positive or negative, as long as the accuser’s name is spelled right.
A profile in the Atlantic describes how Gingrich’s strategy to remake the Congress was implemented:
Gingrich encouraged them to go after their enemies with catchy, alliterative nicknames—“Daffy Dukakis,” “the loony left”—and schooled them in the art of partisan blood sport. Through gopac, he sent out cassette tapes and memos to Republican candidates across the country who wanted to “speak like Newt,” providing them with carefully honed attack lines and creating, quite literally, a new vocabulary for a generation of conservatives. One memo, titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” included a list of recommended words to use in describing Democrats: sick, pathetic, lie, anti-flag, traitors, radical, corrupt.
The goal was to reframe the boring policy debates in Washington as a national battle between good and evil, white hats versus black—a fight for the very soul of America. Through this prism, any news story could be turned into a wedge. Woody Allen had an affair with his partner’s adoptive daughter? “It fits the Democratic Party platform perfectly,” Gingrich declared. A deranged South Carolina woman murdered her two children? A symptom of a “sick” society, Gingrich intoned—and “the only way you can get change is to vote Republican.”
Now that the Congress has become effectively impotent, useful only as a stage for hurling invectives, the focus has turned to state-level governance. Despite the news media’s portrayal of Washington DC, much of the real power in this country was designed by the founders to exist at the state level.
GOP legislators in at least 14 states have enacted 23 new laws that empower state officials to take control of county election boards, strip secretaries of state of their executive authority, or make local election officials criminally or financially liable for even technical errors, according to Protect Democracy.
Ambitious governors are seizing the day.
Virginia’s Gov. Glenn Younkin just vetoed a bunch of uncontroversial legislation passed with bi-partisan support simply because a Democrat was listed as introducing the bills.
Just days into his administration, Youngkin signed an executive order ending "the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education," instituting a tip line – a "snitch line" – so people could report behavior by teachers that they think violates his directive. Nevermind that Critical Race Theory, which posits that racism is baked into U.S. law and institutions, is not actually taught in Virginia’s K-12 schools.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is on a crusade to allow prayer in schools, saying she believes too many critics misunderstand the First Amendment, particularly regarding the presence of faith in the public square. Of course, she’s talking about Christian Prayer. God forbid some devoute Muslim should unroll a carpet before facing east.
Florida’s Gov Ron DiSantis is ready to declare war. He says a 'Cold War' could ensue between Florida and Georgia if Stacey Abrams wins the governor’s race.
“I can’t have [former Cuban leader Raúl-who is no longer in power] Castro to my south and Abrams to my north, that would be a disaster.”
While Florida homeowners can’t get insurance, their Governor has kept his name in the news by signing a law aimed at discussions of gender and threatening to yank the tax status of Disneyland if it doesn’t keep its mouth shut.
Desantis' latest legislative triumph involves creating a stand-alone “election police force” to crack down on (virtually non-existent) voter fraud.
“Election fraud is a unicorn,” said state Rep. Joe Geller, a Democrat from Aventura who was caught up in the chaotic 2000 recount when he led Miami-Dade Democrats as the party’s chair. “It’s not real except in very sparse isolated incidents… Should we be spending millions on a problem that doesn’t exist?”
Republicans throughout the legislative session did not produce any evidence of widespread fraud but cited cases that have cropped up recently, including news reports that have highlighted voters having their registration being changed from “Democrat” to “Republican” without their permission and a handful of voters casting ballots in multiple states.
Voter fraud isn’t the problem in Florida; election fraud is. And it should surprise nobody that the GOP’s concern about voting is actually a projection of things they themselves are doing.
As Miami-Dade Elections Department data showed more than 5,000 registered Democrats switched their party registration to Republican in the 2021-22 cycle, a growing number of seniors told tv station WPLG that their party affiliation had been switched without their permission or knowledge.
An investigation by various media organizations has revealed evidence that Republicans statewide engaged in a program of creating and funding ghost candidates in 2020, with the aim of splitting votes away from Democratic opponents.
As part of an effort to keep their own voters motivated and provide GOP legislators with a platform for smearing Democrats, Republican legislators are in an all-out race to the bottom with bills concerning books, LGBTQ humans, and, of course, abortions.
All these bills concern themselves with societal changes that poll well with voters, but are contrary to fundamentalist doctrines. The outrage associated with hearings on these proposals are designed to provide a rationale for voting in the “right” way via misrepresentation and exaggeration.
There is zero evidence of books corrupting the minds of unsuspecting readers, only carefully culled parents expressing outrage at a few passages or images. There is zero evidence that any trans person has ever been involved in a school bathroom based sexual attack. And, you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who says they “like” having an abortion.
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Destroying the Democratic party is about negating the institutions standing in the way of attaining power, which not-incidentally means moving from the kind of democracy we’ve lived with for the last couple of centuries to the sort of illiberal governance of countries with leaders who can’t seem to retire.
There will be voting and all the trappings, but they’ll be shams designed to keep things the way they are backed by the threat of force or overly broad definitions of sedition.
The Atlantic’s George Packer ran through various scenarios he envisioned about the End of America earlier this year.. He wished for a third way whereby a movement rises to preserve democracy, with an engaged citizenry doing the hard work of running for obscure offices and serving as poll watchers.
It’s a nice wish, made all the more frustrating by the reality of divisions funded to enable financial benefit. We have a whole class of people (not all are politicians) whose paychecks depend on keeping the outrage as high as possible.
Packer’s analysis leading up to that miracle cure is what captures the moment:
For all the violence and oppression of American history, we’ve enjoyed the steadiest democratic run in the modern world. Political stability and national wealth allowed many Americans to go long periods relatively untouched by politics. The end of Trump’s cruel and frenzied presidency seemed to promise a return to the old comforts of the private sphere. Realizing that his defeat gives no respite exhausts me even more than his years in office.
There is no easy way to stop a major party that’s intent on destroying democracy. The demonic energy with which Trump repeats his lies, and Bannon harangues his audience, and Republican politicians around the country try to seize every lever of election machinery—this relentless drive for power by American authoritarians is the major threat that America confronts. The Constitution doesn’t have an answer. No help will come from Republican leaders; if Romney and Susan Collins are all that stand between the republic and its foes, we’re doomed.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com