Is America Witnessing the Collapse of the GOP?
By Thom Hartmann A...
Around the same time Donald Trump issued an executive order to slash the revenue to Social Security, a Republican sheriff in Florida required police and people who come to the police station to take off their masks.This is the face of the Republican Party: greedy, petty, angry, and stupid.
Republicans have fought Social Security ever since it was created in 1935. They have fought Medicare ever since it was created in the 1960s. They oppose voting rights for minorities, want to insert themselves between women and their doctors, and are trying to destroy American families by cutting education, food support and access to good housing. They even oppose the right of working people to unionize so they can have decent pay and good benefits, and the right of average Americans to send their kids to good public schools.
Trump is bragging about all this, tweeting out to white "suburban housewives" that he's going to make sure none of the low income housing that made Jared Kushner rich will ever be built in their neighborhoods.
In many ways, Trump is the embodiment of the modern Republican Party: a bigoted, angry, sexist, stupid white man who pretends to be a billionaire.
As if to emphasize this, he has called Kamala Harris, the first African-American and South Asian woman to ever be on a presidential ticket, "nasty," a word he typically reserves to describe women.
History and the intrinsic goodness of human nature have moved beyond the Republican Party's century-long opposition to working people, voting rights and a strong social safety net.
On the one hand, if the Republican Party doesn't reinvent itself it will go the way of the Whigs. On the other hand, it appears the best the party has to offer for the future are billionaire Mitt Romney or fascist Tom Cotton.
America, broadly, is rejecting the poisons of racism, sexism, selfishness and greed. So long as the Republican Party continues to cling to these fundamentally anti-American values, it will continue to collapse.
-Thom
Comments
#2
The eminent linguist, historian and political commentor Noam Chomsky once called the Republican Party "the most dangerous organization in human history." He said this in reference to the GOP's efforts to stifle remedies to deal with the global climate crisis. Republicans will go so far as to bring humankind to the brink of extinction in their rabid pursuit of power and control. These people will stop at nothing to achieve their ends.
#3
I just participated in a Black Lives group that has been on our boardwalk for 50 nights. We are in a small town on a major highway. "A man" in a big-ass-truck stopped at a traffic light across from us, pushed his upper body out the window and screamed WHITE POWER several times. The 20 yr old black guy next to me laughed, and then prepared his phone camera in case the guy went around the block.
Trump has unleashed this unholy mess and the GOP will never be the same. That's a good thing. I think they will survive, but if not, there are plenty of diverse opinions within the left and independent ranks.
Getting through what hopefully is this last bit of hell is gonna be hard, every damn day hard. Keep talking, writing, showing-up, and preparing to do battle. I hope all of you squeeze in a "are you fucking kidding me kinda" laugh occasionally.
#4
Thom, the blm movement at its core has become a terrorist movement. They will burn themselves out with their outlandish acts like the $65 million dollars in damage they caused in Chicago in just one of their events.
Ariel Atkins, a BLM organizer, called the looting reparations:
"I don’t care if someone decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store, because that makes sure that person eats. That makes sure that person has clothes.”…”That is reparations. Anything they wanted to take, they can take it because these businesses have insurance.”
#5
You would not think that a party that only supports the 1% would last very long. But the money owns the mainstream media. Which it uses very effectively to brainwash a base. It is incredible, they are going to take away Medicare and Social Security from its base and they love it. As long as it is racist, love guns and claims to be law and order it will last. Its base supports the 1%.
#6
Great show, exactly what we need to be talking about,
I'm a Democratic Socialist but I understand these disaffected Republicans are important for creating the big tent we'll need to shutout the Trump Republicans for the foreseeable future. Your guest hit on my compromise solution when he said he wants to keep the free markets and just clean out corruption, but if I'm willing to come his way, he must come ours.
On my website, I have an essay, "Mass Decency," where I layout a version of DS that keeps markets and does not allow the government to own property, per se, but it eliminates poverty, extreme wealth inequality and financial markets for investment, because these are the sources of inequality that frustrate democracy; however, it still promotes entrepreneurship and competition among businesses that provide products and services for the consumer markets. I welcome anyone, especially conservatives, to consider and debate it with me.
democracyjohn.com
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#7
Republicans are stealing our Democracy. Trump is defunding the Post Office.
#8
He threatens if he loses, he'll punish us United Statesians with a "Greater Depression"? Well, I know that if he wins, we will have a Greater Depression that will be even worse than what he can imagine, because he plans on taking away the Postal Service, our Social Security, and Medicare, stripping millions of United Statesians from what we've been depending on for the last 60 years or so. Who will be left over to buy anything? The rich few? There aren't enough rich people to buy enough food, gas, or toilet paper to keep the businesses afloat. We need to get that criminal out of the White House and put him in his place, which is either in jail or 6 feet below, where he belongs. And if he wins, there will be a major uprising. He can depend on that! We won't take that lying down!
#9
Thom, good reminder re: the Republican platforms of the last 100+ years.
A slight change I might have made (though your point is clear!) is to have used the demise of the KNOW-NOTHING Party (1855+\-) instead of the WHIGS, who, as you know, had some decent philosophies, and evolved (in part) to the "Party of Lincoln.)
Your messages are great, thank you, Thom.
#10
As long as the billionaires exist in the U$A, the GOP and their sycophants will be just fine.
As to terrorists, this nation is the premier terrorist org. around the globe. With over 900 military bases around the world to enforce our hegemony, we've murdered and displaced millions, just to encrease the wealth of our greedy few, who rule.
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The Republican Party collapsed a long time ago. Not sure when…Nixon?…Reagan?…Bush 1&2…and now Trump. But one thing is sure, the GOP is now the Shithead Party. Absolutely nothing good can be said about the current Shithead Party. Greedy, racist, arrogantly ignorant, delusional, anti-science, irrational, sadistic, treasonous, pathological liars, corrupt, the list goes on and on.
Off the subject: One way we know for sure that the Hillary Clinton campaign didn’t spy on the Trump campaign is that Trump is in the Whitehouse and not in prison. Had they spied on Trump’s campaign as Trump contends, no doubt they would easily have found enough to send Trump and his family to prison for life.