GOP Establishment Waking Up To The Fact They Can't Control The Monster They Created
Like Dr. Frankenstein, some Republicans are finally waking up to the fact that they can no longer contain the monster they have spent the last 20 years, at least, creating. The “populist”, and I’m using that term loosely, uprising in the Republican party, which a two-bit salesman who was totally unfit for the office managed to harness in order to win the Presidency, can no longer even be controlled by him. That was brought into stark relief when Roy Moore, a man twice thrown off the Alabama Supreme Court for defying the US Supreme Court and the US Constitution, a man who is a radical theocrat and believes that the Bible supersedes the US Constitution and American law, won the Alabama Republican Senate primary over Luther Strange, the candidate supported by Trump himself.
While Moore’s victory may have more to do with Strange’s corrupt bargain to be appointed Senator,(which in itself shows just how sclerotic and dysfunctional the party has become), it does show just how off the rails the Republican party has gone that Moore could not only be a viable candidate but also win. The party has spent the better part of two decades doing everything in its power to destroy a functioning government, stoking racial and class resentment between the lower and middle classes, lying to its voters about what it is capable of doing, and doing everything in its power in the face of its own demographic decline to maintain its own political power. Now that they finally have control of both houses of Congress and the White House, the legacy of lies and lack of interest in governing has come home to roost.
One Republican strategist summed up that party’s position quite succinctly. “Trump seems uniquely able to give voice to voters’ anger, but incapable of channeling it towards a larger purpose…We need to be honest about the fact that there are some powerful people inside the Republican Party who have no interest in governing. They’re focused like a laser on decapitating the party’s leadership, and have no interest in growing the party’s base into a lasting majority.” Another GOP consultant says, “None of this is based on ideology or shared purpose,” he said. “The activist, angry wing of the GOP … doesn’t care about progress or making America great again. It lives and breathes on anger and resentment.”
Now, having stoked that anger and resentment to win elections, the party finds itself unable to move on its promised agenda, primarily because that agenda was built on the lies that stoked the anger and resentment in the first place, what Josh Marshall call the “nonsense debt”. Even worse, as its failures become clear and the Republican party pivots to doing the one thing it usually does know how to do, that is cut taxes on the top 1%, it finds that it can no longer control the anger and resentment it created and, in fact, those passions are now being turned on the party leaders themselves. In the end, the creators may be consumed by the monster they created. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we may be consumed as well.
