By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
The drift of the Republican Party away from partnership in producing positive legislation began with Newt Gingrich (“a dumb person’s idea of a smart person”), if not before. DeLay, Ailes, Limbaugh (Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump, unremembered in death), Breitbart, Jones, Carlson, Hannity. The list goes on.
All of them facilitated Donald Trump’s emergence as the personification of their party’s decline. Rather than detriments, his lying, gaslighting, ignorance, fake Christianity and narcissistic nastiness became vehicles for success. It released what must have been building for years among Republicans (as opposed to conservatives, of which there remain, uncloseted, but a few); namely, a preference for electing people disinterested in legislation but committed to “sticking it to the libs.” Performative outrage and constant denigration were necessary and sufficient for MAGA candidates to be elected.
A few decades ago, it was beyond imagination that the party of Dan Evans, Mark Hatfield, John McCain, Barry Goldwater, Margaret Chase Smith, Everett Dirksen, and dozens more, would nominate for governor such an awful human as North Carolina’s self-described “Black Nazi,” vile social media poster Mark Robinson (CNN: tinyurl.com/badguy2u). Nor would they have countenanced a presidential candidate of that party who referred to Robinson as “better than Martin Luther King” and “Martin Luther King on steroids.” To Trump, skin color defines a person.
The presence of Trump as head of the party has freed red state voters to unlock deeply-held resentments of all people unlike them, to elect people like Boebert, Greene, Gaetz, Fox, Cruz, Cotton, Hawley, et uck, who contribute nothing to the common weal, but make a living appearing on right-wing media, pleasing themselves and their voters by attacking and lying about liberals. Trump is the template for all but a few Republicans serving in Congress. Under Trump’s influence, the Republican Party elects the worst of the worst. It’s what they want. Old-school conservatives are tossed aside like Trump’s rumored adult diapers (Know Your Meme: tinyurl.com/hygiene4u).
Trump’s business failings, his lies and serial adultery, his bragging about sexual predation were well-known. Millions were fine with it and voted for him. (Many millions fewer than for Hillary Clinton, let’s not forget.) To North Carolinians, Mark Robinson’s Holocaust denial, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ+ diatribes were known, too. Nevertheless, he was elected lieutenant governor and is their current choice for governor. The logical conclusion is that MAGA Republicans want their candidates to be horrible.
Placing Jim Jordan and James Comer as chairmen of important investigatory committees, successive Republican speakers of the house stood by appreciatively as their undisguised weaponization of government became routine. Having struck out with impeaching President Joe Biden, they’re moving on to “investigating” Tim Walz and his family. Vice President Kamala Harris’ tenure at McDonald’s is surely next. And they’re doing it out of obsequious obeisance to Trump, such an unworthy candidate that, knowing it’s false, he continues his lie that Haitian immigrants are eating their host city’s pets. But, next to his stolen election lies, all others pale in damage to our democracy. As evident senility increasingly takes hold, some are becoming simply laughable (YouTube: tinyurl.com/2weird4u).
His latest, but surely not final outrage is preemptively blaming “the Jews” if he loses the election. Notwithstanding how ignorant he is about nearly everything, from Bitcoin to tariffs and windmills and alliances, he knows the consequences of such a detestable statement, virtually asking for violent reprisals. Which we can be sure there will be. His flock will feel called upon to do it. Because they were.
After the second assassination attempt, which Trumpworld blamed exclusively on liberals and their truthful rhetoric, Trump and Vance and every right-wing screamer demanded liberals tone it down; by which they meant stop accurately pointing to the dangers that Project Trump 2025 represents. No one should call a political opponent a fascist, Vance hypocrisized. Within moments, Trump and Vance (“Trance”) were back to lying about Haitian menu choices and claiming Kamala Harris is “a radical left Marxist, socialist, communist fascist” (X; tinyurl.com/bigwords4u). There’s been no moratorium on their inflammatory prevarication. Who’d have predicted otherwise? Trance wants the facts about them buried while they continue to lie about Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (X: tinyurl.com/morebad4u). Because he’s smart enough to know better, Vance’s lies are worse than Trump’s (ABC News: tinyurl.com/JDworse4u).
If, first time around, some voters didn’t fully understand who Trump is, after four years in office and four even more horrifying years out of it (both senses of the term), there’s no excuse for pretending he’s fit for election (by the Electoral College) to a second term. Given what’s been seen from him since his ejection, it’s inconsistent with decency that a decent person could vote for him again. We know why anti-Semites do. Homophobes and racists. Xenophobes, for sure (YouTube: tinyurl.com/2sendthemback) (Prepare to be disgusted). But decent? No.
By now, remaining undecided is like having a fire in your house and demanding more information about their hoses before letting firefighters in (tinyurl.com/2decide4u) (one bad word, but excellent).
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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