It’s getting tough to recognize the Republicans
SAN DIEGO » It’s such a bizarre time for the Republican Party. At least, I think this is the Republican Party.
Who can be sure? The GOP has undergone a total makeover, and it’s unrecognizable. If you listen carefully to what Republicans are now saying about various issues — and then compare those words with what they said about those same issues a few years ago — your head will spin.
The party that used to be proimmigrant, pro-free trade, and pro-cop is now keeping out the first, restricting the second and condoning violence against the third. The party that used to lecture the rest of us about taking responsibility for our actions, not playing the victim and respecting the rule of law has basically given up on all three.
All the current lineup cares about is winning elections. This begins with the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not upset the MAGA mob.
President Joe Biden did just that last week in his speech from Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Biden sought to draw the nation’s attention to the fact that MAGA Republicans — like the ones who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in the hopes of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election — play by their own rules. What the rest of us consider fair, proper and legal doesn’t interest them in the least.
“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” Biden said in his remarks. “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
That’s the truth. And, as the saying goes, it hurts.
It definitely stung the reader who wrote to me the very next day with his assessment of the president’s comments.
“Biden’s speech was nasty and offensive,” he wrote. “Everything that Democrats say the Republicans are doing is what the Democrats are doing or planning to do…This is despicable and I know that you do not support this behavior.”
Actually, I was fine with the speech. Democrats are usually the Republicans’ punching bag. It was nice to see a Democrat jab back.
“That was the most demagogic, outrageous, and divisive speech I have ever seen from an American president. Joe Biden essentially declared all those who oppose him and his agenda enemies of the republic. Truly shameful,” tweeted conservative radio host and podcast host Ben Shapiro.
This is the same Ben Shapiro who — when liberals get offended by something— loves to tell them: “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
Now, here’s a fact, Ben. No one cares that Biden hurt your feelings.
And conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt said that Biden’s remarks were about promoting “a fear of monsters under the bed.”
As a Latino who lived through the Trump era, I’m an expert on monsters. For Trump, the scariest ones included my Mexican grandfather. He wasn’t a criminal, rapist or drug trafficker. Just a farmworker.
When I called out Trump’s anti-Mexican demagoguery as racist, conservatives told me to get over it and stop being so sensitive.
Now that so much of the MAGA world is offended, and wounded, that Biden essentially called anyone who voted for Trump a traitor, you can guess my response.
Republicans don’t know where they stand anymore.
They now hold positions that they used to ridicule, and they’re ridiculing positions that they used to hold. What they once held dear, they now hold in contempt. They have no principles, no integrity, no honor. They’re like elephants that wandered into the woods, and then couldn’t find their way out.
I’m not a Republican. I’ve been mistaken for one, now and then, because I enjoy bashing Democrats. Yet I also delight in pummeling Republicans. Most of the time, I can’t tell one party from the other.
That said, I have conservative leanings. I was raised in the “reddest” part of California: the farm country of the Central Valley. I grew up in the land of pickup trucks and gun racks, feed stores and fruit stands.
Thus, I take no pleasure in the moral chaos sweeping across the Republican Party. The GOP is — at this moment — so erratic and so hypocritical, that it actually makes the Democratic Party look organized, consistent and principled by comparison.
And that’s no small magic trick.