Friday, February 9, 2018

"Boycott the Republican Party"


"The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger political apparatus that made a conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former)."

Read The Atlantic, Boycott the Republican Party.

Read also the Washington Post, The cowardice among Republicans is staggering, which states in part:

"The United States Congress is an institution of great power. According to the Constitution, it can deny jurisdiction to the Supreme Court. It can remove the commander in chief. But now it watches as Trump makes the executive branch his personal fiefdom. It stands by — or cheers — as the president persecutes law enforcement professionals for the performance of their public duties.

Why can’t Republican legislators see the personal damage this might cause? Trump has made a practice of forcing people around him to lower their standards and abandon their ideals before turning against them when their usefulness ends. His servants are sucked dry of integrity and dignity, then thrown away like the rind of a squeezed orange. Who does Trump’s bidding and has his or her reputation enhanced? A generation of Republicans will end up writing memoirs of apology and regret.

The political damage to the GOP as the party of corruption and coverup should be obvious as well. This is a rare case when the rats, rather than deserting a sinking ship, seemed determined to ride it all the way down.

But it is damage to the conscience that is hardest to repair. For Republicans, what seemed like a temporary political compromise is becoming an indelible moral stain. The Russia investigation is revealing a Trump universe in which ethical considerations did not (and do not) figure at all. Who can imagine a senior Trump campaign official — say, Paul Manafort or Donald Trump Jr. — saying the words 'That would be wrong'? Their degraded spirit has now invaded the whole GOP. By defending Trump’s transgressions, by justifying his abuses, Republicans are creating an atmosphere in which corruption and cowardice thrive. . .

If there is nothing for which Ryan and other Republican leaders will risk their careers, there is nothing in which they truly believe."

Then read the Washington Post, Trump’s lapdogs now accept the labeling of opponents as ‘treasonous’, which states in part:

"No president in memory has — because that sort of talk is so beyond acceptable discourse that it is fair to call it un-American. Where are the Republicans now — the ones who insisted their motives not be impugned by a Democratic president, who derided Obama’s assumption that their motives were partisan and who warned that a president’s words matter? They’ve become apologists for a president who sounds like a tinpot dictator and who trashes perhaps the cardinal principle of a democracy — namely, the right to oppose and criticize those in power.

Trump’s defenders have scoffed at critics who cite Trump’s attack on the free press, the courts and even the notion of objective reality. They’ve decried an investigation into the president’s cooperation with Russians, of which there is substantial evidence he was willing to receive help from a hostile power. ('He at least tacitly collaborated with a foreign-intelligence operation against his country — sometimes in full public view,' write Ben Wittes and Jonathan Rauch. 'This started during the campaign, when he called upon the Russians to steal and release his opponent’s emails, and has continued during his presidency, as he equivocates on whether foreign intervention occurred and smears intelligence professionals who stand by the facts.') And now Trump’s devoted followers are content to allow him to call Democrats treasonous for not applauding their Great Leader.

During the campaign, Trump fans ridiculed concerns that he was undemocratic and prone to demonstrate an unhealthy affection for authoritarianism and autocratic leaders, most especially Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Now as he confirms the worst of those fears, Republicans wave off evidence of Trump’s undemocratic and, yes, anti-American rhetoric.

If you believe in the rule of law, democratic norms and institutions and decent public debate, Republicans must pay a heavy, heavy price for indulging Trump. I am compelled to agree with Wittes and Rauch: 'The goal is to make the Republican Party answerable at every level, exacting a political price so stinging as to force the party back into the democratic fold.' (That’s small 'd' democratic.) Whether you think the GOP is salvageable or not, to reelect this crew in the midterms is to complete the capitulation to Trump’s anti-democratic brand of politics. All Americans are compelled to stop this."