Republicans are digging their own political grave
To start, let me be clear: I totally welcome civil dialogue and compromise between the traditional left and right. We need both perspectives to govern effectively and without divisive rancor. My aim today is to point out that traditional Republicans are sounding the death knell of their party with their fear-filled refusal to stand up to the MAGA minority. With his constant threats of retribution and violence, his false insistence that the 2020 election was stolen, his ranting, name-calling and lies, Donald Trump and his followers are engaged in a battle against the rule of law and traditional American democratic beliefs where equality and tolerance trumps dictator-like neofascism.
Not only is Trump facing 91 criminal indictments involving illegal hush money payments, election interference and the mishandling of classified documents, he has already been found guilty of fraudulent business practices (New York state) and character defamation in civil cases which are awaiting monetary award damages (E. Jean Carroll was just awarded $83 million in her rape/defamation case). While turning their backs on such stalwarts as Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, Asa Hutchinson, Adam Kinzinger and Chris Christie, the traditional Republicans are putting their very existence at risk.
Yes, Trump won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, but it must be noted that less than 15% of Iowa’s registered Republicans participated as Trump garnered only 20 of the 1,215 delegates required to secure the nomination. New Hampshire yielded another 12 delegates for Trump. All the media has so overhyped these results that one would think that Trump was a runaway winner when, in reality, he leads his last remaining opponent (Nikki Haley) by only 15 delegate votes, 32-17, at this early campaign stage. Are they so afraid of Trump and his threats that they would elect a possible convicted felon to be our commander-in-chief?
To further complicate matters, four months of bipartisan congressional negotiations concerning increased funding for border security and renewed aid for Ukraine and Israel are in jeopardy because Trump and his stalwarts would rather use the immigration crisis as a cornerstone campaign issue rather than doing anything to help solve it in the present. (Vladimir Putin is loving this!) Trump opposes these measures so that it doesn’t appear to give President Biden a rational political victory. Why do they need such an issue? It is because a majority of Americans oppose their views on abortion rights, gun rights and protected voting rights.
Also, recent economic evidence shows that the economy has rebounded from the COVID-induced coma of 6.3% unemployment (January 2021) and a 8.5% inflation rate (July 2022) to a present unemployment rate of 3.4% coupled with a 3.3% inflation rate today. Consumer confidence has surged 12.5% since November. While housing, child care and food costs remain uncomfortably high, Biden’s infrastructure bill (among others) has put more money in the pockets of middle class/ blue collar workers despite the failed Reagan/trump supply-side economic philosophy that has benefitted the top 1% at the expense of the rest of us.
Finally, the last dramatic scene of the film “The American President” shows fictional President Andrew Shepherd making this statement: “(It has been) suggested that being president of this country was, to a certain extent, about character, … and I can tell you without hesitation, being president of this country is entirely about character.” It is time that the traditional conservative Republicans display some backbone by rejecting the character-less Donald Trump in order to save their own party as well as our own great country.