‘Party of Lincoln’ is becoming a racist haven
There’s something fitting about the fact that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the very embodiment of the old Republican establishment, announced he will exit party leadership just as the GOP’s current descent into post-establishment extremism was highlighted by the slithering of neo-Nazis at the conservative movement’s most visible annual convention.
Last Wednesday, McConnell, 82, the Senate’s longest-serving leader, announced he will step down as the chamber’s top Republican in November (though he will serve out the rest of his Senate term).
“One of life’s most underappreciated talents,” McConnell told his Senate colleagues, “is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter.”
His party’s next chapter is already well underway, as demonstrated by last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference. A group of Nazis “appeared to find a friendly reception” at the annual convention as they “secured official CPAC badges, openly mingled with conference attendees and espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories,” NBC News reported.
As problematic as McConnell’s tenure has been, this and other episodes indicate that the hard-right, MAGA-fueled populist movement rising to replace him and other GOP establishment figures promises to be much worse.
None of which is to sing McConnell’s praises.
His abuse of his power regarding Supreme Court appointments was beyond Machiavellian: stalling a Barack Obama nominee for almost a year in order to “let the voters decide,” then ramming a Donald Trump nominee though in mere weeks so they couldn’t. The resulting radical-right bench has ushered in a legalistic hellscape for rape victims, couples seeking fertility treatments and communities wracked by gun violence.
Though Trump long ago threw McConnell into that crowded space under his bus for the unforgivable sin of not groveling to him enough, the outgoing leader was instrumental in creating the current possibility of a second Trump administration — a threat to democracy that should transcend partisan concerns for anyone, of any party, who pays any attention to Trump’s authoritarian (and racist ) rhetoric.
After the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, McConnell publicly and correctly blamed Trump, saying, “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president” and others. Yet after Trump’s well-deserved impeachment for that outrage, McConnell refused to vote to convict him or to rally his Republican caucus to that clearly warranted punishment.
McConnell’s excuse at the time for that gross dereliction of his duty was that the criminal legal system could deal with Trump after he left office. Now, Trump’s defense strategy in his criminal trial over Jan. 6 is that, because the Senate refused to convict him, he is immune from criminal conviction.
So yes, McConnell is culpable, to a point, for today’s dangerous continuation of the MAGA movement. And long before that, he represented the worst of the corporate-coddling, country-club style of Reagan conservatism that used to define the GOP.
But even moderates and liberals may soon look back on that crowd fondly in comparison to what seems to be coming with a transformed GOP.
CPAC itself is a useful measure of that transformation. Its first keynote speaker at its first national convention, in 1974, was none other than then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan.
By 2021, the annual gathering was touting — literally — a golden statue of Trump.
The subject of their idolatry had, by that point, already referred to the Tiki torch-carrying white nationalists of Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people,” had used a presidential debate to shout out to the neo-fascist group Proud Boys (“stand back and stand by”) and had told four congresswomen of color (three of them American-born) to “go back” to their own countries.
So it perhaps wasn’t surprising that in the Trump era, CPAC has had an embarrassing problem with racist provocateurs showing up at an annual convention that generally includes nationally known Republican political candidates. It has put them in the awkward position of having to eject the likes of prominent white nationalist Nick Fuentes from the event in recent years.
As NBC reported from the CPAC convention, the racists are still showing up. They’re just having an easier time getting in.
“Ryan Sanchez, who was previously part of the Nazi ‘Rise Above Movement,’ took photos and videos of himself at the conference with an official badge ... (and) can be seen in the lobby of the conference hotel giving a Nazi salute,” NBC reported. “Other attendees in Sanchez’s company openly used the N-word.”
This was the “Party of Lincoln,” long before it was the party of Reagan or of McConnell.
But now it’s the Party of MAGA — a movement built around a man who has emboldened America’s racist subculture to come out from under their rocks.