The Current Republican Party Must Be Totally Deconstructed
Republicans are no longer making any pretense about caring about democracy and are actively encouraging Trump to fulfill his autocratic inclinations. From encouraging the President to declare an illegal and unconstitutional emergency to overturning the clear results of democratic elections to defying the will and power of the Congress to espousing racist white nationalist rhetoric, the Republican party is displaying its pure contempt for our democracy.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham, tweeted “Speaker Pelosi’s refusal to negotiate on Wall/Barrier funding – even if the government were to be reopened – virtually ends congressional path to fund Wall/Barrier. Time for President @realDonaldTrump to use emergency powers to build Wall/Barrier”. In other words, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is now openly encouraging the President of the United States to declare a fraudulent national emergency and potentially illegally transfer of Congressionally allocated funds in order to build just a small portion of his border wall. There is no valid basis for this emergency which then voids the President’s ability to re-allocate funds that Congress has earmarked for disaster. In addition, the reported plan is to just build the wall only on land currently owned by the US Government, which covers just a fraction of our southern border, again highlighting the fraudulent nature of the emergency to begin with. This is the move of an autocrat, pure and simple, and it is being encouraged by a senior Republican. Lou Dobbs put it more succinctly, saying Trump should “declare a national emergency, and simply sweep aside the recalcitrant left in this country”.
Dobbs’ attitude is indicative of the opinion of many Republicans that Democrats are, by definition, illegitimate holders of any political power. Trump’s hand-picked nominee for Attorney General, William Barr, chosen specifically for his adherence to the unitary executive theory of presidential power, refused to meet with Democratic Senators, citing the government shutdown, having just met with Republican ones. After media exposure, Barr did agree to meet with them yesterday. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin went to the House to testify about why sanctions were being lifted on companies owned or partially owned by Oleg Deripaska, who himself is under sanction and was the person to whom Paul Manafort was deeply in debt. Apparently, his testimony was useless, with Pelosi accusing him of “wasting the time of members of Congress” and adding that it was “[o]ne of the worst classified briefings we’ve received from the Trump administration. The secretary barely testified”. The attitude of both Barr and Mnuchin dismisses the legitimacy of Democrats’ political power. In fact, the government shutdown could be viewed as an extension of that attitude, that the government can not be allowed to function with Democrats holding any power. The same could be said of how Mitch McConnell treated the entire presidency of Barack Obama, especially when it came to filling the third branch of government, the courts.
Of course, Trump has been abrogating Congressional power for much of his term, again with the willing consent of the Republicans in Congress. One-quarter of his cabinet have not been confirmed by the Senate and are beholden to, if not captives, of the industries they supposedly regulate. Cabinet members routinely disregard and violate ethics rules, often for self-enrichment. The acting Attorney General has refused to abide by the ethics recommendations of the DOJ while the Attorney General nominee will apparently not release his financial disclosure or ethics agreement to the public. The government shutdown ensures that the corruption in the Trump administration continues. Trump has received a delay in the emoluments case against him because of the shutdown and regulatory agencies like the FEC are barely functioning. Starting at the top, corruption has permeated all levels of government. As a former member of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) admitted, “I sometimes felt that, rather than engaging in professionally responsible advocacy, my OLC colleagues and I were using the law to legitimize lies”. If that’s how it is in the most respected office of the Justice Department, you can just imagine what it’s like in other federal agencies.
In North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan, Republican-led legislatures have rolled back the powers of the governor now that a Democrat has been elected. In Michigan, the Republican legislature killed a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage and require paid sick leave. Republicans in Missouri are contemplating a similar action to neuter the constitutional ballot initiative that required a non-partisan redistricting committee which passed overwhelmingly in the November election. Now North Dakota is taking a page out of South Dakota’s book from 2016, delaying the implementation of new ethics rules that were passed in the 2018 election. The GOP-led legislature is on the verge of passing a law that would require the next two legislative sessions to approve the constitutional amendment that the voters passed in November before it can become effective. Considering that the North Dakota legislature convenes only every other year, this will delay the expressed wishes of their citizens by five years at a minimum. For Republicans, the democratic process can be comfortably ignored if it infringes on their power in any way.
As Ian Millhiser astutely notes, “The Republican Party is systematically dismantling democracy because they are a shrinking minority that wants to hold onto power”. As I’ve written before, the party consists of two distinct minorities, one of which is the plutocratic class that wants to keep shoveling more wealth to the top 1%. The glue that holds the other minority together, the 35%-40% of the voting electorate, is white nationalism based on racism, misogyny, and xenophobia, all fed by propaganda paid for by the plutocratic class. With the rise of Trump, the expressions of those racist views are now out in the open. Yesterday, Steve King, who claims he “market-tested” the President’s immigration policy for 14 years, wondered why the terms white nationalist and white supremacy had become offensive. A handful of Republicans objected to his questions but the reality is that it is the core of Trump’s message to his base and the wall is merely a symbol of its expression. It is the legacy of racism, in the form of the Electoral College and lack of proportionality in Senate representation, that allows for GOP minority rule and it is white nationalism that currently sustains it.
The government shutdown is the Republicans’ response to the Democrats regaining the smallest amount of federal power and the threat of declaring a national emergency, now encouraged by senior GOP leaders, is Trump’s response to any challenge to his heretofore virtually unfettered power. In 2016, Trump was declaring he would not accept the results of the 2016 election if he lost. Imagine what the response night be if it appears Trump is sure to lose the election in 2020. What new “emergency” might he declare and would the GOP, facing possible electoral defeat of their own, encourage him in doing so as Lindsey Graham has just done? How far will they go to maintain power? Sarah Kendzior writes that “The GOP is no more. What we are left with is dark money fascism. It has guardians in the form of Trump, McConnell — and a media who clutches their pearls about profanity instead of examining the crisis or reflecting on their own role”. The current version of the Republican party is an existential threat to the survival of our democracy. The sooner the party is thrown on the ash heap of history, the better our country will be.