Republican Political Nihilism Is Harming the Nation

There was a time when Republicans put the good and welfare of the nation ahead of partisan posturing and pushing what might be called "performance legislation" that has no chance of enactment and which is solely aimed at exciting the grievance and hate-filled base of the party.  When not engaged in performances that thrill the ugliest elements of the base, congressional Republicans, especially in the House of Representatives, engage in obstructionist behavior and block legislation supported by the vast majority of Americans with no goal other than to harm Democrats and most particularly Joe Biden.  Hence, the Republican House caucus seeks to block any meaningful border security bill since they believe it deprives them of a weapon against Biden as they decry the border situation yet they themselves are the ones blocking a solution.   The same holds true of funding for Ukraine given that (i) some Republicans (i) are now de facto accomplices to Putin's war crimes, and  (ii) prefer to place their partisan games above all else.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the harm Republicans are doing.  Here are highlights: 

If House Republicans refuse to fix the border crisis, nobody will be able to deny the obvious: The GOP is more interested in nursing grievances and stoking anger than actually solving problems. That’s exactly what Donald Trump has trained them to do.

Bipartisan Senate negotiators and the White House say they are close to a deal on legislation to alleviate what everyone agrees is an emergency. It would give Republicans much of what they want regarding the southern border — beefed-up security against illegal crossings, tightened asylum rules, provision for more detentions and expulsions, perhaps even limits on President Biden’s authority to “parole” certain groups of immigrants into the country.

The package would also approve billions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine, which the administration says is urgently needed but some House Republicans oppose.

But after Biden met with congressional leaders at the White House on Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) immediately threw doubt on the very idea of an agreement that addresses both the border and Ukraine. His position has been that the border question has to be resolved first, and that any solution has to be based on draconian House-passed legislation that would, among other things, require building 900 miles of Trump’s border wall. For both the Senate and Biden, Johnson’s demand is a non-starter.

Why would House Republicans balk at a chance to ease the crisis at the border that they’ve been braying about for years? Because they would rather have the issue as a cudgel for Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee, to use against Biden in November.

“Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Tex.) told CNN this month when asked about the idea of a border deal. . . . . . Nehls has a habit of blurting out, uncensored, what the Republican Party really thinks.

Partisanship is one thing, but what Republicans are practicing is something very different. It is political nihilism. It’s not about enacting policies or fulfilling responsibilities but, rather, about accentuating voters’ fears, anxieties and resentments — and doing whatever Trump wants them to do.

Rep. Jamie Raskin’s analysis: “Rather than joining Democrats and Biden in good-faith, bipartisan negotiations to make progress on immigration, they are taking orders from Donald Trump and actively obstructing a bipartisan border deal,” the Maryland Democrat said at a House Oversight and Accountability hearing this week.

It’s not just immigration. Some MAGA Republicans are also obstructing $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, which the White House says is desperately needed to sustain Kyiv’s resistance against invading Russian forces.

Not even Greene and her most unhinged colleagues can seriously think their extreme agenda, however thin it might be, could ever be accepted by the Democrats who control the Senate or their not-so-MAGA colleagues in Senate GOP leadership — to say nothing of Biden, who can veto any nonsense that reaches his desk.

If Republicans really cared about out-of-control spending or taking inventory of U.S. commitments abroad or easing the humanitarian crisis at the border, they would negotiate and compromise. Instead, they posture. They issue sound bites. Occasionally, they eat their own.

The GOP is a riot, not a party, and our national interests are being trampled.