"Free Thought And Debate," He Said.

Everyone needs a good laugh. So getaloada House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s note to his caucus, shortly before he orchestrated Liz Cheney’s beheading: “… [Y]ou should anticipate a vote on recalling the Conference Chair on Wednesday… And unlike the left, we embrace free thought and debate.” 

Sorry if that forced coffee out anyone’s nose. Especially those who remember when, the day after Trump’s insurrection and before he used his wind-blown finger to dig out his own spine and replace it with cotton candy, McCarthy rightly put blame directly on Trump. Now, his people refer to it as “a normal tourist visit” by “peaceful patriots.” Not kidding. By next year, it never even happened. 

Liz Cheney is a hero the way someone who hasn’t strangled anyone lately is. She’s nastily slandered her Democratic Congressional colleagues, voted with Trump more often than her replacement. Since long before Trump, she’s been an active participant in her party’s departure from truth.

But she did what she did knowing it’d end her leadership role and, perhaps, next year, her job. For that, she is to be admired. Still, it’s what any true conservative should have done. Placing preserving our constitutional democracy above political self-interest, she refused to acquiesce to Trump’s big lie. In today’s Trumpublican Party, integrity begets dismissal.

Before the blade fell, she said what we’ve been saying in this column as many ways as possible: no one who supports Trump can be considered conservative. With his lies and calculated divisiveness, his power-grabbing attempts to create distrust of every aspect of democracy, his ten-fold documented obstruction of justice, his love of dictators, he’s the antithesis. 

“Ignoring the lie emboldens the liar,” Cheney said to her disinterested colleagues. “… I will not sit back and watch in silence, while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy… Those who refuse to accept the rulings of our courts are at war with the Constitution … This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans. Attacks against our democratic process and the rule of law empower our adversaries and feed communist propaganda that American democracy is a failure ... Our election was not stolen, and America has not failed.” 

After which her audience figuratively hoed and hummed. Those who hadn’t already walked out.

As Liz’s head thudded into the basket, young Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), as despicable a being as haunts the halls of Congress (among Gaetz, Boberg, Greene, et. al., that’s something special), tweeted, “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye Liz Cheney.” Of such stuff are Republican Representatives now made, and actual conservatives should admit it. One hopes for follow-through from those who’ve promised to form a sane conservative party; and that enough people might join to save conservatism – and America – from Trump. 

On the other hand, a self-described conservative emailed me last week. Among other things, he agreed President Biden won, the election wasn’t rigged, and that Trump has responsibility for the insurrection. Yet he’d voted for him. Yes, the insurrection happened post-election, but Trump was ginning it up long before. His rejection of Congressional oversight, his dismissive pandemic response, his claims about mail-in voting that every Washingtonian knows are false, were well-known. One assumes, therefore, this saner-than-most conservative won’t be joining any new parties.

With faces straight, Republicans decry “cancel culture.” If you need more proof of their hypocrisy, if you’re ready for another laugh (put down your coffee), the trainer whose Derby-winning horse was full of illegal drugs and is therefore disqualified from future races, went on Fox “news,” where truth and the meaning of words go to die, and called it cancel culture. (Need a napkin?)

The effectiveness of such cynical rightwing propaganda makes it hard to be optimistic, even though recent polling has shown that, among swing-state Republicans, Trump is seen unfavorably. Unsurprisingly, in a retreat with Republican leaders boosting Trump, the RNC hid the numbers. Tell us again about “Free thought and debate,” Kevin. 

Speaking of Trumpic damage to America, the Cleveland Clinic just published a paper showing that since January, over 99% of their patients requiring hospitalization had been only partially or not-at-all vaccinated. Another report stated that 82% of hospitalized patients suffered neurological symptoms, which conferred a six-fold increase in the risk of death.

Vaccines save lives. In addition to their unrequited loyalty, Republicans ought to rethink their majority refusal to be vaccinated. Trump doesn’t care if democracy or his cultists die, but we do and so should they. 

 


Lie Or Leave

Last week’s column began with a quote from an actual conservative. Here’s another, from Michael Gerson, former adviser to George the Second: 

“… The GOP is increasingly defined not by its shared beliefs, but by its shared delusions. To be a loyal Republican, one must be either a sucker or a liar. And because this defining falsehood is so obviously and laughably false, we can safely assume that most Republican leaders who embrace it fall into the second category. Knowingly repeating a lie … is now the evidence of Republican fidelity…”

He’s referring, of course, to the perpetuated prevarication that, but for rampant fraud, Trump won the election. “Laughably false,” indeed. Yet believing or pushing it is now the standard by which Republican politicians are judged. Leave the lie, live lurched and languishing like Liz. In the United States of America, exceptional exemplar of democracy and integrity, it’s inexplicable. So let’s try. 

Republicans’ descent began long before Trump; otherwise, he’d have been laughed out of contention. Now they’re desperate to maintain the delusion. Why? The pandemic. It’s revealing truths about current conservatism so indisputable that the only available responses are lies and attacks on democracy. As in Arizona.

The pandemic has floodlit the falsehood of fundamental post-Reagan dogma; namely, that government is the problem. True enough, about bad government, of which we’ve seen plenty. And now we’re seeing the good kind. In differing responses to the pandemic, that truth is writ larger than Trump’s name on a bankrupt building. A wholly-owned subsidiary of multi-sued Trump, Inc., today’s Republican Party is doing its best to obscure the writing.

In that, they’ve had a head start for decades. But it’s been a struggle to rationalize more than half a million deaths and the incompetence, dishonesty, and contumacious denial that caused them.

Yes, the ground-breaking mRNA coronavirus vaccines, for which federally-financed research and development began years earlier, became available during Trump’s “presidency.” We acknowledge his big-government spending on final production, which any president would have ordered. But then he stopped.

Because of absent planning, misinformation, and what’s been described by taskforce participants as Trump’s disinterest, distribution lagged, while he deliberately sabotaged other efforts to stop the spread. When leadership in (mild) sacrifice was called for, he provided the opposite. Someday, psychiatrists might explain why.

But it supports the hypothesis: without government, the vaccines might never have been created; and had there been better government, distribution would have been wider and faster. For that, it took President Biden. Had Trump not spent months lying about or ignoring the virus, had he not hired sycophants and liars, had he not ridiculed protective measures, experts say, half the deaths wouldn’t have occurred. The contrast couldn’t be greater, the lesson more easily learned.

For Republicans, the consequences are monumental. When people were hurting, the economy in ruins, systems overwhelmed, Trumpublicans did next to nothing. Worse than nothing, after Biden took office, as they voted, unanimously, against his measures to restore the economy and help the desperate; laying down an unmistakable marker. (Unbelievably, as benefits arrive, they’re touting them, implying they deserve credit.) People needed good government, and are grateful for it. The pandemic brought recognition of current, effective leadership, and of its previous lack. Bad news for those voting “no.”

Or so you’d think. Never hesitant to dissemble, Republicans answered President Biden’s speech to Congress with plenty of it. A tale of two ditties, the best of words, the worst of words. What our president proposed were policies any functioning, democratic society should expect from a government of, by, and for its people. As he spoke of addressing child poverty, Republicans sat, stony. When he spoke of internal threats to democracy, of the value of government, tax fairness, education, healthcare, Ted Cruz nodded off. Seventy-percent of listeners, however, liked what they heard. Republicans represent the thirty-percent. 

Knowing the implications, their response warned of “socialism” and government takeovers. Understanding the threat to their rich-people-first agenda, they’re committed to blocking any progressive (i.e. helpful, popular) legislation “one-hundred-percent,” as Mitch McConnell just said. Lacking attractive alternatives, they’ll prevent as many Democratic voters as possible from voting, while ensuring their voters will distrust any lost elections.

The preceding thoughts are fact-based. Now for speculation: Perhaps what’s behind Republicans’ pathological push to forestall mask-wearing and vaccine-taking, now said to have made herd immunity unlikely, is discrediting President Biden’s people-positive leadership, which Republicans haven’t provided for decades; and, mainly, keeping his example of competence from taking hold among voters, even if it kills them.

Far-fetched? In today’s GOP-Q, we’re already seeing destructive anti-democracy treachery in abundance. 

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