How GOP cancel culture eats their dead
Republicans tried to cancel the late Sen. John McCain. They tried to cancel Mitt Romney. They tried to cancel George W. Bush. They did cancel former Sen. Jeff Flake (who bounced back as the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, thanks to President Joe Biden.) They’ve canceled other Republicans at just about every level.
They’re trying still to cancel Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
No group of individuals whines more about “cancel culture” than Republicans, yet no group of individuals does it more, oftentimes eating their own dead.
So it wasn’t a huge shock this summer when former President Donald Trump went after Arizona State Sen. Paul Boyer.
He issued a statement in July saying in part, “Republican Arizona State Senator Paul Boyer, a RINO if there ever was one, is doing everything in his power to hold up the damning Forensic Audit of Maricopa County … Boyer has been nothing but trouble, and nobody knows why … .”
The “damning” part of the audit, of course, turned out to be the complete incompetence and blatant partisanship of the auditors and their elected enablers. Even so, why would a former president go after a state lawmaker?
Petty seems like an inadequate word, and Trump exemplifies whatever that lower-than-petty word is.
Trump didn’t like the fact that Boyer chose honesty and integrity over the GOP by being the only Republican not to vote for an Arizona Senate resolution holding the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in contempt for refusing to provide all the election-related materials the Senate Republicans were demanding.
But, as Boyer tweeted in response to Sen. Karen Fann, “Had you told us it was an inexperienced, partisan firm, I wouldn’t have been the only one to object.”
When Boyer decided not to run for a third term, effectively having been canceled by his own party, Trump actually sent out another press release that began, “Great news for Arizona, Senator Paul Boyer, a RINO obstructionist, is done … .”
Boyer then won the internet with a tweet, responding:
Lifelong Republican (3+ years) and now Florida retiree gets to determine who the real Republicans are. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving America!
Trump has been leading the Republican cancel culture for 10 years or so, going after everyone from comedian Bill Maher, to Spanish-language television network Univision, to NFL players kneeling in protest during the National Anthem.
He even went after The Arizona Republic.
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger,
another target of the Republican cancel culture, spoke of how the GOP has weaponized the tactic against its own in describing a visit to Liz Cheney’s Wyoming by Trump sycophant, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida.
Kinzinger said, “If you look at Matt Gaetz going Wyoming, because — what — a tough woman has an independent view and he doesn’t want to go out and explain why he didn’t vote for impeachment? That’s totally GOP cancel culture!”
Cheney isn’t backing down.
She supposedly told other Republicans in a closed door meeting, “We must be true to our principles and to the Constitution. We cannot let the former president drag us backward and make us complicit in his efforts to unravel our democracy. Down that path lies our destruction, and potentially the destruction of our country.”
When you try to cancel someone who’s defending the Constitution, you’re trying to cancel the country.
In a classic Freudian slip, Trump inadvertently admitted recently how destructively idiotic that is.
The former president (or the person he has write his press releases) sent out a statement reading, “Anybody that doesn’t think there wasn’t massive Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election is either very stupid, or very corrupt!”
Grammatical landmines, those double negatives.
Trump just said if you believe there was massive election fraud you are “very stupid, or very corrupt.”
So true.
Thank you, Mr. President.