The Republican Party Is Anti-American

Observing the Democratic Party for the last decade, it has become clear that it represents America. This is not about economic, racial, religious or ethnic demographics, though by those measurements, the statement would be true as well.  I simply mean from both political and governing standpoints, the Democratic Party represents America. We have politicians and voters who are on most sides of many issues, from economic policy, affirmative action, abortion, Israel, law enforcement, climate change (thanks Joe Manchin for helping us be diverse here) and everything else.  The common threads binding Democrats are a belief in democracy and a belief that the people elected to govern, should govern.  And it is these last two things that now mark the biggest distinction between the Democratic and Republicans parties.  I believe Mark Wahlberg described the GOP best in The Departed:

Before I go further, I recommend you listen to this weeks episode of Rain On Your Parade podcast (find it on the podcast tab). The episode was focused on American democracy and covers what I will not be covering today (how to make America more democratic – it was not a very hopeful episode, but I believe it is the best one so far of my rebranded show).  This blog, is more about how congressional Republicans no longer are interested in the two pillars of their jobs: democracy and governing.

Imagine a basketball team if you will. In practice, you scrimmage, run drills and try to compete for your own individual success to secure more playing time for yourself.  But in the end, once the coaches have selected playing time based on those results, the team is then unified in the goal of winning games together.  There will be disagreements sometimes on who is playing well, who deserves more time, etc. but the overall goal never changes: winning as a team.

Now imagine a basketball team, where two members of the starting five do not like what the way the coaches are drawing plays and distributing playing time, so they proceed to injure their teammates… during games.  That might be disturbing to see, wouldn’t it? That is what the Republican Party is at this point.  There is an element of the GOP that cannot govern, but the vast majority do not want to govern. And that is why it is time to do away with the fallacy that “we all play for the same team: America.” We don’t.  Democrats are trying to do the work of the American people for the benefit the American people (they may disagree within the ranks on how to do it, but there is not an “anti-governing” wing of the Democratic Party). Now you could be the rare, principled Republican team player like Mitt Romney, who might have genuine disagreements on policy. But that is because he might think he has a better path to success. But the vast majority of Republicans are driven by nothing more than appeasing Trump and schadenfreude – seeing Democrats fail, no matter how much it hurts America, is the joy.  Republicans will cut of your nose to spite the Democrats’ face.

The Republican Party is not an “opposition party” anymore. It is an anti-American party.  Their inactions and obstructions are not based on policy (see the border legislation as a good example) and they are not really based on fact (if you can say the Biden economy is a disaster you are either a liar or dangerously ignorant).  They are based on stopping the very workings of democracy and impeding the function of government: to govern for the benefit of its constituents.

But the American people seem all to willing to indulge in the fantasy that “Democrats and Biden” can’t get things done.  For example, when the child supplemental income failed to renew (despite slashing childhood poverty by 30% I believe), it was 48 Democrats who voted for it, 1 or 2 who voted against it (Joe Manchin – basically a Reagan Democrat) and 50 Republican Senators who voted against it.  If you think 96% of Democrats voting for something to help children and 0% of Republicans is a DEMOCRAT problem, then you are doing the GOP’s work for them.  The Republican party has lowered the bar for themselves so much that America basically looks at Democrats to do 100% of the work with 50% of the workforce and then blames them for not doing the LITERALLY impossible (if you believe in math and constitutional law).  Here is the comparison I made in my special, TALL BOY, last year:

So, to say this for the 1000th time, if you care about American principles and American people, there is one party that both wants to help people and is doing/trying things to help people. The other party, if they sat and did nothing, would be improving upon their current stance, which is to actively impede progress.  In fact every time Republicans actually are able to do something (with permission from their dominatrix Donald Trump) it ends up unpopular (tax cuts for the rich, getting rid of Roe v Wade). Republicans cannot govern and they don’t want to govern. The only thing more contemptible that what the Republicans are currently doing, would be knowing who they are and returning them to power.