Not many options left to save the Party of Lincoln

 

“If fascism comes [to America] … it will probably be ‘wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution’.”  - James Waterman Wise, Jr

Following November’s presidential election, GOP voters seemed to send a mixed message.  While eager to hang on to their congressional candidates - many who supported Trumpism -  they seem to be ready to show Trump himself the exit door.  Were they hoping for a return to something that would come close to reflecting traditional conservative values and allegiance to the Constitution?

If that is indeed what many GOP voters signaled for, their Party leaders failed to get the message. The conspiracy absurdities that Trump continues to promote, without any credible facts or data to support them, now reveal a political party that has detached itself from reality.  More seriously is the appearance it gives to aligning themselves with a wannabe dictator.

Failing to gain either the popular or electoral majority, Trump sycophants fell in line with him to use this country’s legal system to overturn the legitimate election that created a Biden/Harris victory.  And to the horror of many Texans along with Texas evangelical, Beth Moore, it seems that this cuckoo choo-choo is being driven by some of our own citizens.  

With Crayolas gripped angrily in his child-like fist, Texas AG Ken Paxton - who’s currently under federal indictment for securities fraud - scrawled out an absurd, unprecedented lawsuit to support the lunacy of those who signed on to this nonsense.  

Putting their name to this coup attempt was our own Michael Burgess and eleven other Texas Republican congressmen.  Senator Ted Cruz, whose wife and father were insulted in 2016 by Donald Trump, gleefully agreed to his request to represent this joke in the nation’s Supreme Court.  

To their credit, the high court firmly rebuked the laughable lawsuit, sending these infantile whiners back to face (hopefully) most of their outraged constituents.  Adding to the crazy was Texas’ GOP Party Chairman Adam West who called for acts of secession from the states whose AGs signed on to Paxton’s document.

So what’s a traditional Republican faced with as many of their members capitulate to the incompetent and power-crazed whims of a narcissistic buffoon?  

Where moderate Republicans are vying with extremists elements in their Party, progressive Independents like me could cross over in primaries to vote for such GOP moderates.  This doesn’t bind us to that candidate in the general election.  But the loss to a sensible adult Republican in the vein of a John McCain, Mitt Romney or even Susan Collins would be preferable over those Louie Gohmert types we’re getting stuck with.

Another option for that 20-30% of GOP voters who still seem to live in the real world could be to simply start voting for the Democratic candidate in traditional Republican strongholds where Trump devotees have won the GOP nomination.  Such sacrifices would hurt in the short run but should eventually reawaken the saner aspects to Lincoln’s Party - the man who championed the cause of preserving the Union. Not to do so it seems would only further drive the once mighty GOP down that rabbit hole that will forever reflect a hopeless, pathetic shadow of its former self.

A century ago Democrats, stained for decades by the actions of many in their party for their support of slavery’s brutal suppression followed by Jim Crow racism began to turn things around from this negative image.  They would lead the way in forging legislation that created the kind of equality for all men and women that many founders had originally idealized.

Is there sufficient moral clarity within the GOP to do the same today by pulling itself away from their voter suppression tactics and the autocratic abyss that Trump has led them into?

Some still riding the Trump Crazy Train

“I believe we never become our entire and honest selves until we are dead - and not then until we have been dead for years and years.  People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier” - Mark Twain

Twain’s dark humor here seems to address how cowards dwell in their own skin as they  live among those who share their unfounded fears in order to fit in.  A sort of survival instinct if you will.  The fact that humans are never fully honest is a no brainer.  It speaks to that part of us where courage is too often missing at times when it’s needed most.  

Cowardice on a grand scale can impact entire societies, threatening the stability a people need to grow and lift us past those fears that hold us back from attaining “a more perfect union”.
Though some of Trump’s supporters have begrudgingly accepted a Biden presidency, the passenger list aboard the Cuckoo Choo-choo still remains considerable.  That list consists of Rudy “Drip Dry” Giuliani, Sidney “blow up Georgia” Powell, Lindsey “two-faced” Graham, Texas’ AG Ken Paxton and a host of FOX pundits including Sean “conspiracy king” Hannity, Lou “Unhinged” Dobbs and Tucker “elitist hound” Carlson.  

Then of course there are the tens of thousands of QAnon freaks who allege “that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against” the Donald, who they divine is fighting the cabal.

Though these people can be viewed as delusional they are not necessarily cowards.  The true cowards are those who know better and yet remain silent in light of these
absurdities.  Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and most of his Republican majority lead this assault on sanity including our own John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.  They hide behind the crowds claiming Biden’s victory was illegitimate and in essence demur to the unfounded notion virulently expressed by one misguided Trump die-hard that it was the man-child who won the election by a landslide

The fraud that Trump and his lick-spittle legal team claim about debunked voter fraud conspiracies threatens our electoral process, now and in future elections, to the delight of our global adversaries, especially China and Russia.  With their operative in the White House they have to exercise little influence of their own to achieve the chaos they so desperately desire for our democratic republic.

This attack on our constitutional staples has been used previously by such brutal dictators as Spain’s Franco, Italy’s Mussolini and Germany’s Adolph Hitler who clawed power away from established democratic institutions through mob violence.  With their weakened economies and an appeal to nationalism these despots felt free to authorize monstrous behavior that resulted in millions of innocent men, women and children perishing.

Along the same lines, as this lame duck president huddles in his White House bunker, clamoring for his followers to over throw the election, his mismanagement of the pandemic crisis will contribute to as many as 400,000 plus deaths sometime this January, aided and abetted by the cowardice of GOP elected officials who stand idly by as he behaves in this unforgivable fashion.

Lincoln’s divided nation pitted pro-slavey advocates and abolitionists against each other. Today it’s those who support Trump’s autocratic maneuvers versus those of us who wish to sustain our constitutional institutions and norms.   Though the voter mail fraud conspiracy will likely become just another silly contrivance by those people who also lost touch with reality in their day, it will remain a source of division among us for years.

Edmund Burke warned civilization that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

It’s time for courage, not fear, to grip the reins of leadership in this country and lead us out of this political morass.  To those unwilling or unable to confront the ignoble, petulant loser that Trump has become I say, “grow a pair” and help move this nation forward lest what integrity you claim for yourself is massively overshadowed by your total absence of nerve.