Not Just Trump, All Republicans Must Go

After leaving the Republican Party close to two decades ago as the Christofascist (and by extension, the white supremacists) rose in the party, I concluded that the only way the Republican Party could be saved was to work for its defeat in every election possible. I came to this conclusion after holding a seat on the City Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia Beach and serving as a precinct captain and campaign worker for eight years and seeing the party being taken over by the far right. Other moderates slowly exited the GOP as the distemper and insanity spread with the rise of Donald Trump exemplifying what a moral and racist cesspool the party had become. With the election of Trump, the so-called Republican intelligentsia finally came to the conclusion that I reached many years earlier: all of the Republicans needed to be defeated in order to either see a new GOP arise from the ashes or a replacement center right party come into being.  Sadly, had more of them ceased being apologists for the GOP earlier, perhaps Trump might never have been elected.  A column in the Washington Post by a former Republican makes the case for throwing all Republicans up for election out of office.  Here are column highlights:

The argument for keeping House and Senate Republicans rests on the premise they somehow lack the disqualifying characteristics (e.g., congenital lying, racism, constitutional illiteracy, conspiracy-mongering) that addle President Trump. Think again.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) used to be considered a middle-of-the-road Republican — before she exonerated Trump for plainly impeachable conduct. Now, she sounds just like him. Iowa Starting Line reports that Ernst now seems to embrace "a thoroughly-discredited QAnon conspiracy theory about U.S. deaths from covid-19 being a mere fraction of what has been reported.” Without any factual support — and with massive data to the contrary — the senator insists it’s all a plot

Meanwhile, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) has followed Trump’s lead in espousing racist gibberish. This week, he put up a Facebook post (later removed by the social media platform) that included a photo of armed Black men and protesters and declared, “If this shows up, we’ll consider the armed presence a real threat. We being, We the People, of Louisiana. One way ticket fellas. Have your affairs in order.” By deploying the word “this,” Higgins dehumanized the individuals depicted, reducing them to mere objects. The response? No rebuke. No censure. No expulsion from Congress. Is it any surprise? A party that welcomes two QAnon-embracing congressional nominees has become a cesspool of hate and conspiracies.

Beyond expressions of overt racism and ongoing support for totems of the Confederacy, denial of systemic racism is now the default setting for virtually all Republicans, including the president, attorney general and members of Congress. Statistical data (not only in the criminal justice system), the series of unjustified police killings of African Americans, the disproportionate number of Black people afflicted by covid-19, and nearly every other social or economic indicator (from life span to wealth) reveal that the tentacles of racism still have a stranglehold on the country. The notion that everything is fine and that no institutional racism exists is the defense mechanism of a party invested in white supremacy.

A party that willfully denies the painful reality of endemic racial inequity — and, therefore, lacks the desire to remedy it — cannot responsibly govern in a multiracial society.

All of that is in addition to other atrocities from the GOP. Republicans routinely amplified Russian propaganda; repeated outright lies (e.g., that President Barack Obama illegally spied on Trump or that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found no evidence of obstruction of justice); went along with Trump for months in his anti-mask sneering; echoed baseless claims of widespread voter fraud; and joined Trump’s hunt for the identity of the whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal . . . They willingly took part in the assault on truth and contributed to remaking the party into a cult of personality.

House and Senate Republicans are not helpless bystanders in the Trump travesty. They protected him from criticism, enabled his antics and amplified his most egregious lies. Once you determine Trump is unfit to serve, it really is not possible to give the rest of the party a clean bill of health.

Vote them all out.