Ch 4.2 | 🐘Today's GOP

This definition of liberty has always resonated with me:

Liberty means being free to make your own choices about your own life and therefore what you do with your body and your property ought to be up to you, provided, however, that other people must not forcibly interfere with your liberty, and you must not forcibly interfere with theirs. 

Slowly but surely, over the past five decades, the Republican Party has centered itself on a definition of liberty that no longer aligns with the foregoing. The GOP’s policies and its embrace of Trump forced me to conclude that the lesser of two evils today is the Democratic Party. But it wasn’t just its embrace of the MAGA movement that changed my perspective. 

That moment caused me to look back on what’s happened to the GOP over time. Whether it was Republicans’ assault on our liberty via the Patriot Act under George W Bush; their support of corporate greed over our citizens and our environment; their brand of hatred appearing pervasive in the entire party platform; their embrace of religion over science (they are literally banning books for God’s sake); and/or their clear bias towards retaining power at all costs, even if it means embracing hypocrisy at a level — I can no longer stomach any of it. They have embraced Trump’s “cult of personality” and his tendency to embrace autocracy over democracy. 

"The Republican Revolt Against Democracy, Explained in 13 charts" from Vox is worth a read.

Who we elect matters

Some of my friends discount Trump’s controversies and tell me that they don’t elect a president, they elect a party for its platform. I’m not sure I agree with that statement. But even if you feel that way, have you really studied the GOP platform to develop your own perspective? 

A policy of contradiction

Ask yourself, what does the GOP actually stand for? Which policy beyond the tax cuts that many have benefited from comprise the GOP platform? They claim to be the party of family values and yet Republicans have lined up behind people like Donald Trump, Herschel Walker and Marjorie Taylor Greene. They claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility and yet during the Trump era they added $7.8 trillion to the debt and passed a tax cut that dried up all federal revenues when we needed it the most during the pandemic. Is that what you’d call fiscally responsible? 

The GOP claims to be pro-military and yet it nearly tanked the PACT Act, which was designed to give health care to sick Americans because they were angry that Sen. Joe Manchin, a rare conservative Democrat, allowed his party to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. If it wasn’t for Jon Stewart, they might have succeeded. Is that pro-military? The GOP claims to be pro-police and yet they did nothing to support the Capitol Police officers assaulted by the mob on Jan. 6, 2021. Is that pro-police? 

They claim to be pro-states’ rights and yet they all signed on to the Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results in four other states because they weren’t happy with the outcome in 2020. Is that pro-states’ rights? 

Power at all costs

Here is a snippet of what the GOP leadership was saying in 2016 about Trump. Please don’t rationalize this by saying, “It’s just politics.” This is hypocrisy.

That is at the heart of our problem. We all tend to give politicians a free pass when it comes to ethics, morality and the truth. We must stop making excuses for their lies and immoral behavior!

But, from a moral/ethical perspective, here’s where I am in a nutshell: The GOP no longer aligns with my beliefs because I believe in striving for truth over ideology, science over religion, democracy over autocracy, kindness over cruelty and most of all a belief in freedom that the GOP no longer embraces.

Let's just look at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Here's a quote from "Whitewash? Untangling the controversy over Florida’s black history curriculum," an article in The Dispatch, a conservative (and subscription-based, advertisement-free) online magazine founded by Jonah Goldberg, Stephen F. Hayes and Toby Stock:

Fairness is good for the soul even when the beneficiary doesn’t deserve it.

There are many in politics who don’t deserve it. Like Ron DeSantis.

No modern Republican has done more to normalize using state power to target cultural enemies than he has. It’s the core of his presidential campaign: His argument against Donald Trump is that Trump talks a good post-liberal game but the governor of Florida is the only one actually playing. DeSantis, not Trump, punched Disney in the face for criticizing right-wing policies, muscled tech companies on how they should police their social media platforms, demanded an investigation of COVID vaccines, and signed bills various and sundry aimed at LGBT constituencies.

Let me state this as clear as I can: Nothing about what DeSantis is doing will ever solve any problem we are facing in America. He has doubled down on the culture war, which is nothing but a way to distract the American people from the fact that our elected leaders are not solving the real challenges at home. This is just another reason that I won't vote for this hypocritical party that has abandoned its core conservative beliefs.

I also want to make it clear that I do not believe GOP voters are hypocrites. Far from it! In fact, I’ve made the point that I believe most people are in the center and are good people who want the best for everyone. This criticism concerns the leaders of the GOP as well as the leaders of the evangelical Christian right (or any other extreme religious sect) who are only concerned with obtaining (or retaining) power and have demonstrated their hypocrisy repeatedly.

Voting should be as easy and accessible as possible, and in many cases it is. But in recent years, more than 400 anti-voter bills have been introduced by Republicans in 48 states. These bills erect unnecessary barriers for people to register to vote, vote by mail or vote in person. The result is a severely compromised democracy that doesn’t reflect the will of the people. Our democracy works best when all eligible voters can participate and have their voices heard. 

Suppression efforts range from the seemingly unobstructive, like strict voter ID laws and limits on early voting, to mass purges of voter rolls and systematic disenfranchisement. These measures disproportionately impact people of color, students, the elderly and people with disabilities. And long before election cycles even begin, legislators redraw district lines that determine the weight of your vote.

Let’s take that item, gerrymandering, as an example of where the GOP’s leadership should cause all of us to pause. A decade ago, Republicans launched a hugely successful effort, called Project REDMAP, to take control of state legislatures and then used their new majorities to draw maps that locked in their advantage for a decade. Heading into this decade’s round of redistricting, Republicans had the power to draw the lines of 187 congressional districts while Democrats had power in 75, according to the Cook Political Report.

During the 2012, 2014 and 2016 elections, gerrymandering shifted 59 congressional seats, 39 for Republicans and 20 for Democrats, according to a report from the Center for American Progress. Although it is illegal to carve up districts that weaken the influence of voters based on their race, lawmakers do it anyway. Voting rights advocates face an uphill battle in challenging these maps in court. In 2019, the Supreme Court said there was nothing federal courts could do to stop partisan gerrymandering. Redistricting litigation often takes years to move its way through the courts, allowing lawmakers to get at least one election, and often many more, conducted under district lines that may later get struck down. In the meantime, the effects are insidious. When politicians know their seat is safe, they no longer have to worry about competition from the opposing party or concern themselves with reaching out to the other party’s voters. Instead, they become more interested in appealing to their own base and fending off challengers from within their own party. It makes politics more extreme and contributes to extreme polarization.

Unfortunately, the Republican assault on free and fair elections is accelerating. A year that began with the violent insurrection at the Capitol ended with an unprecedented push to politicize, criminalize or in other ways subvert the nonpartisan administration of elections. A 2021 year-end report from pro-democracy groups identified no fewer than 262 bills introduced in 41 states to hijack the election process. Of those, 32 bills have become law in 17 states. The largest number of bills is concentrated in precisely those states that became the focus of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign to block the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. In Arizona, where Trump supporters insisted on an “audit” to challenge Biden’s victory in the state, legislators introduced 20 subversion bills. And Georgia, where Trump attempted to browbeat the top election official to find extra votes for him, saw the introduction of 15 bills. Texas, whose ultra-right Republican group has made the state ground zero of voter suppression and election interference, has as many as 59 bills.

By way of example, did you hear that Tim Michels, the Republican nominee for governor of Wisconsin in 2022, promised a group of supporters that the GOP would seize permanent control of the state if he were to win? (He lost.) This is what the GOP has devolved into. Republicans’ aspirations for authoritarian rule should terrify us all.

The Voting Rights Act was signed into law on Aug 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many Southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. And yet, states have been able to engage in voter suppression on a massive scale, often purposefully targeting people of color through tactics such as restraints on voter registration and absentee voting, racially gerrymandered district maps, and more. And given the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, which narrows the scope of Voting Rights Act, it is clearly up to Congress to do what is necessary to protect the rights of all voters in this country. We all know how that is going. The Democrats have been trying to pass legislation like the Voting Rights Advancement Act to reinstate critical protections against voter suppression in the wake of the Brnovich decision. That bill passed the House when Democrats were in the majority but died in the Senate, where a simple majority isn’t enough to overcome opposition tactics like the filibuster. Now that Republicans run the House, the legislation isn’t going anywhere in that chamber either.

Thankfully, in a 6-3 decision in June 2023 in Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court rejected the “independent state legislature theory,” a legal concept that embraces the idea that the Constitution gives state legislatures unfettered authority to regulate federal elections, with little to no interference from the courts. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, while conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

The case centered on a fight in North Carolina, where Republicans said a state court had violated the U.S. Constitution by striking down a gerrymandered congressional map. The original map was expected to produce 10 GOP victories among 14 House districts, despite North Carolina’s electorate being relatively split between Democrats and Republicans. In a 4-3 decision, the state Supreme Court invalidated the map and ordered a new one to be drawn by an appointed group of three mapmakers. North Carolina Republicans challenged that map, which was ultimately used in the 2022 election and produced an evenly split congressional delegation.

Republicans cited the Constitution's elections clauses to argue that state courts did not have jurisdiction over a legislature's actions in federal elections. The clause, found in Article I, says:

The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.

Article II's election clause says that states should appoint presidential electors to the Electoral College “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”

Strong supporters of the theory argue that these passages mean elections are the exclusive purview of legislative bodies, and that courts, governors, independent commissions and even election administrators have little or no jurisdiction over the elections. Opponents have argued that this is a misreading of the original text and would break long-standing precedent that includes election oversight by the courts. 

But that decision hardly settled the matter. There are two incredible organizations leading the charge to fight gerrymandering: Common Cause and The People, both nonprofits and both doing great work!

Kathay Feng, executive director of Common Cause, was the architect of California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission and she led a multiyear effort to organize the campaign that helped pass Propositions 11 and 20, creating the nation’s first independent citizens redistricting commission. Katie Fahey, co-founder and executive director of The People, led a successful grassroots campaign that ended gerrymandering in Michigan by amending the state Constitution in 2018 with 61% of the vote.

This is important work to bring fairness back to our elections and ensure proportionate representation. I encourage you to learn more and donate to these great causes!

Congressional Republicans in chaos

Trump is a cancer that is destroying the GOP, helped along by "MAGA Republicans."

In October 2023, the GOP removed Speaker Kevin McCarthy after Republican hard-liners voted with Democrats to oust him. Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) led the charge, accusing McCarthy of being too soft for voting with Democrats on a spending bill that avoided a government shutdown. Now, as The New Republic puts it: Republicans have turned on him and publicly attacked him for charges of pedophilia and inappropriate discussion on the floor. Is there a broader plan? Of course not.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board published "Republicans Cut Off Their Own Heads," in which it describes how eight MAGA Republicans got the chaos they wanted.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney is a Republican from deeply conservative Wyoming and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. She was among the few Republican officeholders to stand up to Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress – actions that got her expelled from the party leadership. She bravely agreed to serve as vice chair of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, and called out a potential successor to McCarthy despite knowing it would further ostracize her from the party.

During a speech in October 2023 at the University of Minnesota, Cheney told the audience point-blank,

Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives. Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election. …, There was a handful of people, of which he was the leader, who knew what Donald Trump had planned. Now somebody needs to ask Jim Jordan, “Why didn’t you report to the Capitol Police what you knew Donald Trump had planned? You were in those meetings at the White House.”

She concluded:

If the Republicans decide that Jim Jordan should be the Speaker of the House … there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.

In the end, Jordan didn't win, but another hard-right candidate, Mike Johnson — after many ballots — received unanimous support from the GOP to become speaker of the House. He has his own election denial history.

In December 2020, Johnson submitted an amicus brief in Texas signed by over 100 House Republicans that sought to invalidate Biden's victory in four swing states. He also trafficked baseless allegations that Dominion voting machines had corrupted the election.

Johnson, an evangelical Christian, has also drawn attention for his hardline views on abortion and homosexuality. He recently voted for a national abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest and co-sponsored a 20-week abortion ban. He's also defended Louisiana's same-sex marriage ban in front of the Supreme Court, and in opinion pieces from the mid-2000s he compared homosexuality to bestiality and called it "inherently unnatural" and a "dangerous lifestyle." Gaetz celebrated Johnson's rise, saying on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast:

“If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.”

Are you OK with this? If you want to know more about Johnson, read the Politico article "55 Things You Need to Know About Mike Johnson" and draw your own conclusions.

(In the spring of 2024, after Johnson worked with Democrats — like McCarthy had done — to pass much-needed foreign aid legislation to help Israel and Ukraine, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to have him tossed out of the speakership as well. This time, the effort failed as most Democrats backed Johnson, seemingly part of a deal to get those bills through Congress.)

This is what Trump has wrought on the GOP. If the party is going to regain its footing, it needs to reject Trump and his MAGA" movement. It needs to embrace common sense candidates who are willing to reach across the aisle and govern and lead. We are at a turning point and the GOP needs to quickly pivot to the middle. If they did, by for example endorsing a candidate like Nikki Haley, the GOP might be able to save itself.