The Republican Party Freak Show

Today's Republican Party is unrecognizable when compared to the GOP of 15 years ago much less 30 or 40 years ago.  Crackpots and lunatics who never would have been welcome in the party or nominated for office years ago have not only been made welcome but are often in control of the party or are Republican candidates for high office.   True, Donald Trump has played a major roll in turning the GOP into something horrible, but the embrace of ignorance and willingness to spread lies and disinformation began years earlier, in my view, when evangelicals and Christofascists were foolishly and cynically welcomed into the party.  Soon the inmates took over the asylum and the stage was set for the likes of Trump who in 2016 promised evangelicals power in exchange for their loyalty and jettisoning of everything they claimed to believe in.   Short of continued electoral defeats it is hard to imagine the GOP ever becoming a sane and normal political party again.  Some, believe the GOP is beyond saving.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the rogues gallery of misfits and crazies who now are the face of the Republican Party.  Here are excerpts: 

The GOP is a moral freak show, and freak shows attract freaks. Which is why Mark Robinson fits in so well in today’s Republican Party.

Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, has described himself as a “devout Christian.” But a recent CNN story reported that several years ago, he was a porn-site user who enjoyed watching transgender pornography (despite a history of an anti-transgender rhetoric), referred to himself as a “Black Nazi,” and supported the return of slavery.

These allegations aren’t entirely shocking, because Robinson—a self-described “MAGA Republican”—has shown signs in the past of being a deeply troubled person. (My Atlantic colleague David Graham wrote a superb profile of Robinson in May.)

Regarding the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, in 2011, Robinson wrote, “Get that fucking commie bastard off the National Mall!” Robinson also has referred to the slain civil-rights champion as “worse than a maggot,” a “ho fucking, phony,” and a “huckster.” During the Obama presidency, Robinson wrote, “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!” . . . He is also an election denier, claiming that Joe Biden “stole the election.” . . . . He has used demeaning language against Jews and gay people. He has cruelly mocked school-shooting survivors (“media prosti-tots”). And he supported a total ban on abortion, without exceptions for rape or incest, even though he admitted that he’d paid for an abortion in the past.

Much of this was known before he ran for governor. No matter. Republicans in North Carolina nominated him anyway, and Donald Trump has lavished praise on the man he calls his “friend,” offering Robinson his “full and total endorsement” and dubbing him “one of the hottest politicians” in the country.

SOME REPUBLICANS ARE distancing themselves from Robinson partly because they are worried he’ll be defeated, but also because they’re even more concerned that he will drag down other Republicans, including Trump. But the truth is that Robinson is a perfect addition to the Republican ensemble.

The GOP vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, has been relentlessly promoting the lie that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating pets. In 2021, he said that the United States was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs, and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has blamed wildfires on a Jewish space laser, promoted a conspiracy alleging that some Democratic Party leaders were running a human-trafficking and pedophilia ring, and agreed with commenters who suggested that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Florida, was a “massive false flag.”

The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey reported that Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, who is under House investigation for having sex with an underage girl, “used to walk around the cloakroom showing people porno of him and his latest girlfriend,” according to a source Godfrey spoke with.

The GOP is home to a Republican governor, Kristi Noem, who describes in her book shooting her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, in a gravel pit, as well as killing an unnamed goat. A Republican senator, Ron Johnson, claimed that COVID was “pre-planned” by a secret group of “elites” even while he promoted disinformation claiming that Ivermectin, which is commonly used to deworm livestock, was an effective treatment for COVID.

Earlier this month, Trump attended a 9/11 memorial event in New York City. He took as his guest a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Laura Loomer, who has claimed that 9/11 was an inside job, referred to Kamala Harris as a “drug using prostitute,” and said that Democrats should be tried for treason and executed. (Trump has called Loomer a “woman with courage” and a “free spirit.”)

Tucker Carlson, a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention and an unofficial Trump adviser, recently hosted a Holocaust revisionist on his podcast. He praised the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones as having been “vindicated on everything” and described Jones as “the most extraordinary person” he has ever met. (Two years ago, Sandy Hook families won nearly $1.5 billion in defamation and emotional-distress lawsuits against Jones for his repeatedly calling the 2012 school shooting, in which 20 first graders and six educators were killed, a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to get more gun-control legislation passed.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY today isn’t incidentally grotesque; like the man who leads it, Donald Trump, it is grotesque at its core. It is the Island of Misfit Toys, though in this case there’s a maliciousness to the misfits, starting with Trump, that makes them uniquely dangerous to the republic. Since 2016, they have been at war with reality, delighting in their dime-store nihilism, creating “alternative facts” and tortured explanations to justify the lawlessness and moral depravity and derangement of their leader.

None of this is hidden; it is on display in neon lights, almost every hour of every day. No one who supports the Republican Party, who casts a vote for Trump and for his MAGA acolytes, can say they don’t know.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in an essay titled “As Breathing and Consciousness Return,” warned that no one who “voluntarily runs with the hounds of falsehood” will be able to justify himself to the living, or to posterity, or to his friends, or to his children. Don’t surrender to corruption, the great Russian writer and dissident said; strive for the liberation of our souls by not participating in the lie. Don’t consent to the lies. The challenges facing Solzhenitsyn were quite different, and certainly far more difficult, than anything we face, but his fundamental point still holds.

The Trump movement is built on layers of lies. It’s late, but it’s never too late to liberate yourself from them. One word of truth outweighs the world.