Looking for Republican peace
While some people wonder whether we’re on the brink of a second Civil War, I sometimes wonder whether we ever really finished the first one.
The Juneteenth holiday weekend, a celebration of the ending of legal slavery in the United States, offered ample unfortunate examples, ironically from Republicans, the party I fondly remember as “the party of Lincoln.” Yes, that was a long time ago. From Illinois, whose license plates constantly remind us is the “Land of Lincoln,” U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger shared an ugly death threat mailed to his wife saying the two of them and their 5-month-old infant son would soon be executed. Can’t we all get along? Sick messages like that are a sign of fear and bitter resentment. Leaders can work to calm fears or turn up the heat.
Kinzinger and Wyoming’s Liz Cheney are the only two Republicans serving on the House committee investigating the boiling pot known as the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Crossing party lines in that way has become an unpardonable sin in the Grand Old Party, especially after the “party of Lincoln” became the party of Donald Trump.
“There is violence in the future, I’m going to tell you,” Kinzinger said on ABC’s “This Week.” “And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.”
Alarmist? Ah, Kinzinger sounded downright prophetic when former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican running for retiring Sen. Roy Blunt’s seat, released a video Monday of him holding a shotgun like a suburban Rambo and calling on his supporters to “join the MAGA crew” and get “RINO hunting permits.”
RINO is Republicanspeak for “Republican in name only.” You know a party is eating its own when its candidates joke about shooting fellow partisans.
Among those not laughing was Caleb Rowden, Republican floor leader of the Missouri state Senate. “We have been in contact with the Missouri Highway Patrol,” Rowden tweeted Monday, “and hope that former Gov. Greitens finds the help he needs.” Rowden also advised: “Anyone with multiple accusations of abuse toward women and children should probably steer clear of this rhetoric.”
That was a reminder of how the former governor was forced to resign in 2018 after allegations surfaced of campaign violations and an assault of a woman he was dating.
That RINO label, a useful tool for bullies, gets around. It was thrown in GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s face at the Texas Republican convention over the Juneteenth weekend.
There he was confronted, jostled and taunted as “a globalist RINO” and “eyepatch McCain,” a tag popularized by Fox News host Tucker Carlson after Trump and his followers stopped treating the late Sen. John McCain with the heroic respect his memory deserves.
Crenshaw clapped back on Twitter to conspiracy theory podcaster Alex Stein, among his other hecklers who posted footage: “This is what happens when angry little boys like @ alexstein99 don’t grow up and can’t get girlfriends...” Ouch!
Democrats and other liberals don’t need to tarnish honorable Republicans when childish rightwingers do the job for them.
But I was startled, if not shocked, by the Texas GOP platform’s call for repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That’s the law that gave some teeth to voting rights for racial minorities that were guaranteed by the 14th and 15th amendments.
In other words, that’s the sort of rollback that could have both Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spinning in their graves.
Republicans obviously are feeling their oats as President Joe Biden’s national Democrats show pitifully low energy these days, and the GOP’s Texas convention
“There is violence in the future, I'm going to tell you. And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can't expect any differently.”
U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican member of the U.S. House committtee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol
shows remarkable zest, enough to revive calls for a referendum on secession from the union.
When former Texas Gov. Rick Perry hinted at secession in a Tea Party rally in 2009 after President Barack Obama’s election, I wanted to respond as a loyal Northerner with the title of a witty 2012 “Manifesto for Southern Secession” written by Northerner Chuck Thompson: “Better Off Without ‘Em.”
But I didn’t. I’m not that cynical. Not yet.
I know too many goodhearted Texans who believe as I do that we’re better off figuring out how to work together.
Lincoln understood. Unity is the American way — or, at least, it used to be.