Which Party Is Going To Have to Rebuild After The Trump Debacle?

Cone Of Shame by Nancy Ohanian

If someone was to start an essay with "I was a Republican for most of my adult life," there's a good chance I would stop reading. How much of a moron or bigot would someone have to be to have been a Republican for most of their adult life? I wasn't even an adult when I figured out that even a horribly flawed Democratic Party in practice wasn't as bad as the Republican Party in aspiration (and practice). But the title of the new Tom Nichols essay for The Atlantic-- This Republican Party Is Not Worth Saving-- I wouldn't have heard his compelling arguments from why defeating Trump is just the beginning of a process that needs to go much deeper. "No one should ever get a second chance," he wrote, "to destroy the Constitution." And he wasn't just talking about Mitch McConnell and the band of unspeakably anti-patriotic political hacks that make up the congressional Republican Party.

Nichols, basically addressing conservatives and Republicans, began by acknowledging that he understands "the attachment to that GOP, even among those who have sworn to defeat Donald Trump, but the time for sentimentality is over. That party is long gone. Today the Republicans are the party of 'American carnage' and Russian collusion, of scams, plots, and weapons-grade contempt for the rule of law. The only decent, sensible, and conservative position is to vote against this Republican Party at every level, and bring the sad final days of a once-great political institution to an end. Then build the party back up again-- from scratch. I’m not advocating for voting against the GOP merely to punish Republicans for Trump’s existence in their party. Rather, conservatives must finally accept that at this point Trump and the Republican Party are indistinguishable. Trump and his circle have gutted the old GOP and stuffed its empty husk with the Trump family’s paranoia and corruption."

This Facebook ad was made specifically for Liam O'Mara's campaign to replace Crooked Ken Calvert in Riverside County. But it sums up, elegantly, Nichols' entire argument for why the GOP-- not just Trump-- needs to go away. In fact, it goes deeper and beyond Nichols' argument. Take a look:





Nicholas wrote that "the transformation of the GOP into a cult of personality is so complete that the Republicans didn’t even bother presenting a platform at their own convention. Like a group of ciphers at a meeting of SPECTRE, they nodded at whatever Number One told them to do, each of them fearing an extended pinkie finger pressing the button that would electrocute them into political oblivion. Some Republicans, even while they grant that Trump is a sociopath and an idiot-- and how unsettling that so many of them will stipulate to that-- are willing to continue voting for Republican candidates because the GOP is nominally pro-life or because the administration’s judicial appointments show that the people around the president are doing what conservatives should want done. But Trump’s few conservative achievements are meaningless when compared with his war on American democracy, a rampage that few Republicans have lifted a finger to stop. Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr have turned the constitutional order and the rule of law into a joke. If you’re Roger Stone or Michael Flynn, the White House will arrange pardons, commutations, or even the outright betrayal of the Justice Department’s own lawyers. Felony convictions are for the little people. The Constitution is just busywork for chumps."

I guess it's still too hard for him to understand why Republicans are now and have always been-- at least in our lifetimes-- unfit to be allowed to get behind the wheel. My biggest worry is that Republicans like Nichols are infiltrating and polluting the DNA of the Democratic Party and making it over into a Reaganite party where Democrats like Biden and Manchin and Schumer and Gottheimer will be perfectly comfortable, but where there will be no place for progressives or for anyone who understands the solidarity of the New Deal. Yesterday, in fact, Liam O'Mara, the same independent-minded progressive running for the Riverside County congressional seat, wrote that "Given the very real impact on ordinary people of rising costs and stagnant wages, this country needs to turn around. It elected Barack Obama because he spun a tale about hope and change that resonated with a country in the grip of recession. There was a historic opportunity in those first two years to realign the economy to favour growth for all, not just the one per cent. Alas, Obama failed completely to rise to the challenge of the day, preferring to bail out the people who caused the problem, not those who suffered its effects. At the end of the day, exactly the same people and ideas were left in charge. This is how we got Trump. And people really thought Biden was their best shot against him? For some reason, 'It's the economy, stupid!' remains one of the hardest lessons for this party to learn. If Democrats really want to win nationally, not just against Trump but consistently, and regain ground in the swing states, we must get back to our New Deal roots and tear up the nonsensical DLC crap that's driven the party since the 1970s. And a new batch of policy-driven challengers across the state and country give me hope that we're gaining ground at the grassroots at least. The Squad is already set to double this year, and there are a lot of great challengers running in red districts as well as the safely blue seats."

"GOP representatives in the people’s house." continued Nichols, "sneer at concepts such as oversight and the separation of powers. Rather than demand accountability from the executive branch on COVID-19, on the Hatch Act, on the Postal Service-- on anything, really-- they either repose in sullen silence or they take up the lance for the president and overwhelm committee hearings with Trumpian word salad. Meanwhile, senators who swore to be 'impartial' jurors refused to hear actual evidence during an impeachment trial. They confirmed a rogue’s gallery of incompetent henchmen and cronies to important positions. They continue to downplay Russian attacks on the U.S. political system and are now outfoxed by the likes of John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, a nonentity who has ruled that none of them, Republican or Democrat, should be allowed to ask any pesky questions about election security in person."

“But Gorsuch,” Republicans chirp when pressed about their party’s demise, as if Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh will saddle up and save us when elected Republicans refuse to stop Trump from finally turning the FBI into his private police force or Barr from using the Department of Homeland Security as the White House’s own Belarusian interior ministry. (Kavanaugh, who warned during his confirmation hearings that “what goes around comes around,” might be exactly the justice to put his stamp on such moves.)

Conservatives must also let go of fantasies about saving the “good” Republicans, a list that is virtually nonexistent. (You can’t count Mitt Romney more than once.) The occasional furrowed brow-- a specialty of the feckless Susan Collins of Maine-- is not enough. The few, like Romney, who have dared grasp at moments of sanity have been pilloried by Trump and other Republicans. In any case, Romney is chained to the GOP caucus, a crew that includes the jabbering Louie Gohmert and calculating Elise Stefanik in the House, and the sniveling Ted Cruz and amoral Mitch McConnell in the Senate.

Would-be Madisonians among the Republicans warn that no party should have untrammeled access to the levers of power-- and especially not the Democrats. Yes, they say, we understand that Trump must go, but if Joe Biden is allowed to run the executive branch without a Republican Senate, America will become a one-party state that sooner or later will fall under the boot of the dreaded Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This faux constitutionalism is naked hypocrisy: I do not recall, during my days in the GOP, anyone on the right ever pleading that Americans should leave at least a few Democrats in office so that we Republicans would not go crazy and start force-feeding Ayn Rand or Friedrich Hayek to impressionable schoolchildren.

Nichols-- the lifelong Republican-- will never understand AOC or Liam O'Mara nor what they represent. When he asks "if the Republicans suffer a full-spectrum defeat in 2020, what comes next?," he is thinking about something that doesn't exist-- never existed and never will exist: "sensible conservatives-- who believe in limited government and the prudent, constitutional stewardship of national power and resources." He looks forward to them feeling "safe to run for national office as Republicans again. Those at the local level who were bullied into silence by their state organizations might be able to come out of hiding and challenge the people who led them to disaster." But what he's describing in the Big Tent neoliberal Democratic Party of Joe Biden. "Reconstructing the GOP-- or any center-right party that might one day replace it-- will take a long time, and the process will be painful." So why not just infiltrate the Democratic Party and kick out the progressives and make them go through the long, painful process of rebuilding? That's my fear and I see it already happening. I see Nichols' fear as well: "The remaining opportunists in the GOP will try to avert any kind of reform by making a last-ditch lunge to the right to fill the vacuum left by Trump’s culture warring and race-baiting. In the short term, the party might become smaller and more extreme, even as it loses seats. So be it. The hardening of the GOP into a toxic conglomeration of hucksters, quislings, racists, theocrats, and cultists is already happening. The party gladly accepted support from white supremacists and the Russian secret services, and now welcomes QAnon kooks into its caucus. Conservatives must learn that the only way out of 'the wilderness' is first to vanquish those who led them there. No person should ever get a second chance to destroy the Constitution. Trump has brought the United States to the brink of civil catastrophe, and the Republican Party has protected him from the consequences of all his immoral and illegal actions more ably than even Fred Trump did. Conservatives need to put the current Republican Party out of its-- and our-- misery."

How about a pitch for progressives in the Democratic Party now? This thermometer on the right will take you to a page with 17 progressives who won their primaries and now have to face off against conservatives in November. I've talked with each of these men and women. Some-- like Kara Eastman, Nat McMurray, Mike Siegel, J.D. Scholten-- I've gotten to know over years, not just over the phone, but over the dinner table and on the frontlines of the battle between progressivism and neoliberalism. Some I'm just getting to know but feel confident enough to recommend them. I doubt there are many DWT readers with the capacity to max out to each of the candidates on the page... but that has never been what Blue America is about. Our average contribution is around $45. We've raised between $6 and $7 million for progressive candidates and we've seen former candidates we've backed-- like Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal, Jamie Raskin, Matt Cartwright, Katie Porter... changing the national conversation and changing the way Americans look at politics, one painful step at a time. Many of our former candidates I see as in the middle of their journeys and I have every expectation that men and women like Randy Bryce, Mark Gamba, Hector Oseguera, McKayla Wilkes, Kaniela Ing, Robert Emmons, Tom Winter, Eva Putzova, Shaniyat Chowdhury, Robin Wilt, Morgan Harper, Keeda Haynes, Nabilah Islam, Tomas Ramos are part of America's future. Meanwhile. it will only set you back $17 to give each of the candidates one dollar-- or maybe you like what Liam O'Mara had to say above and you want to give him that whole $17. Or perhaps you live in Texas and want to split the contribution equally between Mike Siegal and Julie Oliver, or maybe you live in New York and want to give a boost to Mondaire Jones, Nate McMurray and Jamaal Bowman. Start by clicking the thermometer and give what you can to whomever you want. (And, hey, there's no better feedback for us at Blue America as we decide where to spend our last minute ad money.)

One thing is certain. If voters don't end Republican political dominance everywhere and at every level it exists, it won;'t be the rebuilding of parties that matter; it will be the rebuilding of our entire world and society. Nothing will survey the Climate Change that the GOP is still denying ostrich-like. Yesterday, Patagonia sent this out to all their customers and it really doesn't matter which party you identify with or if you're "non-political." It really is now or never.