On Saturday evening, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced the death of the Republican Party. Said it was time to bury it — and build something new. Which immediately made me wonder, if the GOP is dead, who killed it? And brief thought suggested it was Hawley and his fellow travelers who were the murderers.
It is common knowledge to people who watch police procedurals that the police often discover the perp loitering around the scene of the crime and that arsonists enjoy staying close to the burning building to bathe themselves in the heat of their offense.
If Hawley means there will soon be no party named “Republican” and that some newly named faction will rise from its ashes, he is probably wrong. The last time America witnessed the creation of a major new party was in 1856, when the Republican Party, representing the interests of abolitionists, free-soilers, and unionists was born. So let us assume he is just pissed at the GOP’s pathetic performance in the 2022 midterms.
It is frustrating when you do not get what you want. And if that happens, you have two choices. Great people roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of figuring out what went wrong and what they need to do to fix it. Weak, petulant people sulk and point the finger. Hawley is a paid-up member of the second group.
In his mind, Hawley sees himself as mighty Horatius on the Sublician Bridge, single-handedly defending Rome against the Etruscans. In reality, he is a scared little bully — one moment saluting the mob. The next, fleeing it like the bitch coward he is.
He is Casper Milquetoast, so ashamed by his lack of manliness that he writes a book called ‘Manhood: What America Needs’ — thereby joining the ranks of doughboy Tucker Carlson’s testicle tanners.
Republicanism failed because there are too many Hawleys in its ranks. These people have no ideas, no policies, and no philosophy beyond sniggering slurs cast at Democrats. The electorate looked at this bunch of vacuous sadists and saw there was no there, there. MAGA doesn’t need substance. It lives on the fuel of bigotry and hate.
But substantive conservatives and right-leaning independents need something concrete to build on. For them, the GOP has nothing. They do not want to vote Democratic because they disagree with Democratic philosophy. That is fair enough. Ideas, like consumer products, are improved in the forge of competition. If we all thought the same, we would be no better than communists and fascists.
America relies on the clash of ideas. But there is no clash when one side has no ideas.
For two years, 2017-2018, the Republicans controlled the Presidency, the Senate, and the House. In that time, all they achieved was to give more money to rich people and cash to corporations already sitting on mounds of lucre. They failed to build Trump’s folly, as they only managed a few miles of unsteady, feeble fencing. And they failed to overturn Obamacare, their number one objective.
The main reason for their unsuccessful attempt to strip Americans of healthcare is their lack of an alternative. They had eight years of the Obama presidency to come up with something else — they came to power with nothing. Trump promised better and cheaper health coverage — it was a lie.
Rick Scott knows that the GOP signifies nothing. When Sean Hannity asked the head of the Republican Senate Reelection Committee, “Where did all this pie in the sky talk about a wave and a tsunami election come from? Because I never saw it,” Scott replied,
“Here’s what happened to us. Election Day, our voters didn’t show up. We didn’t get enough voters. It’s a complete disappointment. We’ve got to reflect now. What didn’t happen? I think we didn’t have enough of a positive message. We said everything about how bad the Biden agenda was. It’s bad, the Democrats are radical, but we have to have a plan of what we stand for.”
Scott understates the paucity of the GOP’s position. They had no positive message. Why do they not have a plan? What are they waiting for? At least Newt Gingrich had a “Contract with America” — or, as the wits had it, a “Contract on America”.
In fairness, Scott did release something he called ‘Rescue America — A 12-Point Plan’. However, it was not a plan. It was a paean to the usual rot conservatives think is a plan, but is instead simply a statement of positions. Like, “We Believe in God.” “Marriages are between a man and a woman.” “LGBTQ+ is icky.”
Where the GOP did have a plan and succeed, they soon discovered that their plan sucked. Conservatives celebrated the judicial execution of Roe. But as soon as citizens had the opportunity to weigh in, they overwhelmingly supported the right to choose — in ruby-red Kansas, of all places. The GOP thought it was a tempest in a teapot, but the repercussions carried on into the midterms.
Yet conservatives remain so deluded that on Thursday, as the size of the GOP‘s midterm debacle became evident, Kaleigh McEnany, former Trump Press Secretary, agreed that the right to choose had motivated the vote for Democrats. But then she added, “Abortion’s going to go away.” That is the conservative mind for you. “I know the facts. But I will ignore them if they contradict my desires.”
The Republican Party is a collective of the deluded, the damned, and the despicable. But it is not dead. Although fittingly, after George Bush Sr. condemned “trickle-down” as “voodoo economics”, it is well described as the Zombie Party.
Hawley acts like he has the chutzpah to start something new, in your more eloquent way, fat chance, thank you Pitt