Burke: What to expect if you’re expecting Republicans to win

Published 1:30 am Monday, November 7, 2022

By Tom Burke / Herald columnist

Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly said, “In victory, you deserve champagne. In defeat, you need it.” Well, I’m icing up a couple of magnums for Tuesday night. But I don’t know whether I’ll be celebrating the triumph of democracy or the nightmare of MAGA fascism.

And while I was researching Boney’s quote (I’d seen it years ago but wanted to check again before putting it here) I came across a few other things to pass on.

But before I do, I thought I’d remind those who haven’t yet voted what’s at stake tomorrow. Simply put: A vote for a Republican is a vote to end Democracy. And, to put down my marker so that if the GOP wins majorities in Congress — and they do what they’ve been threatening to do — I’ll be able to say, “I told ya so,” and it won’t come out of the blue.

Now, based on Republican statements and promises, here’s what you can expect if they take the House and/or Senate:

• Pass a national abortion ban; per Memhet Oz and Lindsey Graham;

• Kill Social Security [and Medicare], “It will be my objective to phase out Social Security. To pull it up by the roots and get rid of it,” Sen. Mike Lee, F-Utah.

• Repeal the Inflation Reduction Act immediately increasing medication costs (especially for seniors) and wiping out the $35 cap on insulin; House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy;

• Impeach Joe Biden, Anthony Fauci, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Republican Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for starters; Trump, Reps. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, et al;

• Continue building the Wall; Trump and Sen. Chuck Grassley;

• Defund the FBI; Greene;

• Cut or end U.S. aid to Ukraine as “Under Republicans not another penny will go to Ukraine”; Greene;

• Outlaw or invalidate gay marriage; Sen Ted Cruz;

• Stop efforts to counter the effects of climate change and roll back environmental regulations on the fossil fuel industry; McCarthy;

• Pass restrictive immigration legislation including increasing border patrol funding; Reps. Jim Jordan, Tom McClintock, Greene and Elise Stefanik);

• Probe Hunter Biden’s business dealings, subpoena President Biden, and threaten to jail him and the entire Biden family if they resist testifying; Steve Bannon and Rep. Glenn Grothman,R-Wis.;

• Investigate the Justice Department and the FBI, including its search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for stolen classified documents and the Bureau’s focus on “domestic violent extremism”; Jordan;

• Make the House the home of wack-a-doodle 2020 election deniers who believe Trump’s claims that he actually won the 2020 election;

• Block any Biden Supreme Court pick in 2024; McConnell;

• Make Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Trump’s leading defenders, the top GOP member of the Judiciary Committee to help “frame up the 2024 race” so Republicans can “make sure” Trump wins; McCarthy;

• Investigate the Jan. 6 committee to discredit its finding that Trump instigated, aided and abetted the insurrection;

As John Pitney Jr., a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., bluntly warns, they’ll be, “A lot of messaging; not a lot of actual lawmaking.”

Which makes a big fat lie out of the campaign the Republicans just ran, where they focused entirely on fears of inflation, crime, drugs, immigration and drag shows rather than what they intended to actually do about those issues.

As George Orwell — who wrote, among other things; “1984” — famously said: “The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’ Whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.” Which Republicans such as Smiley have done in taking no responsibility for offering any solutions.

Now, just for grins and giggles, here’s a few vintage observations applicable to today’s political scene (my italics):

By social commentator and comedian George Carlin: “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” (And anyone who still believes the Big Lie — that Trump won — and still sends money to him and his MAGA crowd is, by definition, stupid.)

• By gonzo journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson who said, and this was way “before” Donald Trump: “It is difficult for the ordinary voter to come to grips with the notion that a truly evil man, a truthless monster with the brains of a king rat and the soul of a cockroach … will bring his gang in with him, a mean network of lawyers and salesmen and pimps who will loot the national treasury, warp the laws, mock the rules, and stay awake 22 hours a day looking for at least one reason to declare war, officially, on some hapless tribe in the Sahara, or a heathen fanatic like the Ayatollah Khomeini,” (or the communist, socialist, libtard, pedo, blood-drinking, Pelosi-and Biden-led Democrats. But, gentle reader, that’s just what happened; Trump did, his family and cronies did, and if you think the price of a head of lettuce or a quart of buttermilk is more important than the survival of our democracy, good luck, ‘cause they want to do it again, in 2024.)

• And by Thomas Jefferson in the perennial election-time quote, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” Better, though, was H.L. Mencken, American journalist and the “sage of Baltimore,” who said: “People deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard.”

Folks, if the Republicans win, you’re gonna get it “good and hard.”

And I told ya so.

Slava Ukraine.

Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.