When Only One Party Cares About Democracy, America's In Trouble
The Party of No wants to stop pretending it gives a damn about democracy
The House also voted today on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, which steps up the sharing of information about domestic terrorism among government departments and creates an interagency task force to analyze and combat white supremacist and neo-Nazi infiltration of the uniformed services and federal law enforcement agencies. The House passed the bill by a vote of 222 to 203. All the no votes came from Republicans; all the Democrats voted in favor. It now goes on to the Senate.
In most cases, you’d be entitled to expect a candidate to tell you what their plans are. First, you’d want to hear what they support, what they’d do once in office, and what they’d hope to accomplish. Then, you might expect them to tell you WHY you should vote for them- you know, make a case for why they’re a better candidate than their Democratic opponent, Joe Kiddiediddler.
Unfortunately, if you’re a Republican, or even if you’re leaning that way, what you’ve heard over the last couple of election cycles is nothing positive. Sure, Republicans have told you what they oppose. And they’ve told you about all of the nasty, evil, and cruel things their Democratic opponents are guilty of, but what you won’t hear is them making a case for themselves.
Republicans want you to vote AGAINST Democrats even more than they want you to vote for Republicans.
You won’t hear Republicans making a case for the positive things they’ll do. Sure, they’ll talk about Critical Race Theory or keeping “biological males” out of girls’ sports. You’ll hear about “runaway spending,” “Joe Biden’s baby food crisis,” or other things they feel the President is responsible for, like gasoline prices. But, of course, everything is someone else’s fault, and they’ll promise that if you just put Republicans back in power…well, life will be wonderful again.
We need only look back to when the “Party of No” was in power to understand that Republicans can’t govern. Donald Trump promised that he’d eliminate the budget deficit in eight years. When he left office on January 20, 2021, though, the deficit was higher than when he came into office four years earlier.
Republicans complain volubly about government spending, but it inevitably balloons when they’re in power.
You can’t govern by saying “NO!” to everything, though Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged that Republicans would do precisely that. He seemed to think that inaction IS action because it would keep Democrats from spending money and accomplishing things like trying to make America a better place.
What I can’t wrap my head around is how 203 Republicans could vote against the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022. A rational person might look at that and draw the (not unreasonable) conclusion that Republicans SUPPORT domestic terrorism or at the very least refuse to do anything about it.
Yeah, the mass murder of ten Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York? Not our problem; that would mean we’d have to do something about guns, and our base won’t let us touch their precious 2nd Amendment rights in any shape, manner, OR form.
And 192 Republicans voted against an emergency appropriation to address the baby formula crisis? So they’re willing to blame Joe Biden for the problem (fact check: THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T MAKE BABY FORMULA!!), but they’re unwilling to do anything about it?
That’s the Party of No in action. Or, more accurately, inaction.
If you’re thinking the Republican strategy is to say no to everything and then go on Fox News Channel and blame Joe Biden for it all being FUBAR’d…well, you wouldn't be wrong. You’d have pretty much nailed it.
If you remember the 2020 GOP Convention, there was no party platform. The Republican Party, for the first time in its history, didn’t produce a document stating what it stands for. Instead, it decided that it would stand for whatever Donald Trump said it stands for, a cowardly, milquetoast position that continues today.
So Republican candidates spend so much time on the negative because they have NOTHING positive to run on. The GOP can’t tell you what they stand for because it’s ideologically adrift. Roll that around your brainpan for a moment- one of our two major political parties no longer knows what ideals it stands for, only that it opposes everything.
Except for the abject worship of and devotion to every utterance vomited forth by Donald J. Trump.
Wir sind SO gefickt….
The House passed a bill to crack down on price gouging by oil companies…and 207 Republicans voted against it. Why? Are they pro-price gouging? Are they that beholden to Big Oil? Or could it be that they want to blame gas prices on Joe Biden?
These are Republicans we’re talking about. OF COURSE, they want to blame high gas prices on President Biden. They don’t give a damn about the prices Joe and Ethel Sixpack are paying at the pump. What they care about is having yet more ammunition they can use on Fox News Channel against the President.
Yes, it’s cynical, counterproductive, and disgusting, but that’s the brand of politics employed by today’s GOP. These are the same folks who tried to overturn the results of a legitimately free and fair Presidential election because their guy didn’t win. Decency, reason, and fairness mean nothing to them.
Neither, apparently, does democracy.
I’m not going to claim that Democrats have all the answers to America’s problems. No, Democrats have their shortcomings and an incomplete grasp of some of the issues facing America today- but they’re making an effort. They’re not just sitting on their hands and screaming “NO!” every time their adversaries propose a program to try and make things better.
Instead of being the Party of No, perhaps Republicans could put forward some ideas? Then, they could let America know where they stand or what they think might work.
Of course, if they were to start putting ideas forward, they would begin to become targets for those who think they might have better ideas- i.e., Democrats. The great thing about screaming “NO!” is that you never have to lay down a marker. You never have to take a stand, so you never risk anything. If you never risk anything, elections are SO much easier to control. You just throw out some unsubstantiated accusations- call Democrats “pedos” or “groomers”- and sit back and watch the fun.
The downside, of course, is that you risk being viewed as cynical, lazy, and power-hungry. Moreover, your constituents may come to suspect that all you care about is political power, especially when you never do anything to make their lives or circumstances better.
Of course, you can always find a way to blame Democrats, right?
Then again, Republicans will continue playing the game, even though democracy is a pain in the ass for them. They’d prefer to seize power permanently so they could stop the charade of having to pretend they give a damn about democracy.
Because the Party of No cares about one thing- political power, preferably theirs.
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This has got to be a joke right!? Your telling us that since Democrats took majority power and Biden became President this country is better!!?? In less than two years Democrats have created crisis after crisis, failure after failure. President Joe Biden Jr is destroying any credibility his party had with the American people.