Republican Balancing Act – A Slow Fade

“What we see McCarthy doing is trying to hold together a coalition that maybe can’t be held together,” 

Rob Stutzman, who was a senior advisor to ex-GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when [GOP House Minority Leader, Kevin] McCarthy first rose to prominence in California politics (LA Times)  

The new Republican party is "living in an alternate reality."

Former GOP Oklahoma Congressman and CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) Chair Mickey Edwards 

There was a time from 1916 well into the 1920s where if you were not completely onboard with the Ku Klux Klan, a Dixiecrat favorite, you were out of step with a very popular and pervasive vector. Klan members, by the thousands (pictured above), marched down Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues (pictured above) in Washington, DC in the mid/late 1920s. Jim Crowe laws not only remained popular but expanded. It was the era where “America First” had an unambiguous racist meaning. 

World War II pushed races together towards a common enemy. The Civil Rights movement, from the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka (which mandated school integration and reversed “separate but equal”) to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, followed up by federal enforcement, literally decimated the underlying legal justifications for generally legitimized racism. Racism was clearly lessened, but too much of that negative attitude just slid under the surface. 

The racist forces truly pushed back against each element of civil rights progress with passionate vituperatives, often punctuated with murderous violence. The implementers of the worst kinds of racism were often the very police forces sworn to uphold the law. Slowly, three steps forward and two steps back, we made progress. Not remotely what would be deemed either fair or legally justified. That simmering racism was dramatically unleashed with a President who legitimized discrimination and ill-will based on racial and ethnic criteria, almost always tied to people of color or non-Christian views. Immigrants from the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. People of color. Especially Black Americans. Denigration both as to the classes of people and their protests. A mythical “antifa” – a philosophy and not an identifiable group according to the FBI – was fabricated to justify harsh “law and order” reactions against liberal causes.

As the gathering of Republicans who wantonly misused the “conservative label,” at CPAC in Orlando in the last weekend in February, history was repeating itself. Hardline uber-Republicans – like former GOP Senate Majority (now Minority) Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy – somehow believe they can find a way to hold Republican traditionalists and conspiracy theory-driven populists together in a coherent unity. While they encourage censure and marginalization of any Republican who supported either Trump’s impeachment or conviction? The four realities of CPAC suggest the Republican Party, which even failed to present a political platform for the 2020 election: 1. Trump is still the GOP. 2. Despite zero evidence in support of this claim and a dramatically large popular vote to the contrary, the 2020 election was stolen. 3. Forget about reaching across the aisle; Democrats and mainstream media are the enemy. And 4. Voting laws and practices are now target number one to insure that GOP opposition is silenced. 

In addition to iterating the “big lie” (that he won the election), presiding over a party that was eating its own, Trump’s message at CPAC was that he was presiding over a new unified Republican Party. Even as he castigated, by name, Republicans who pushed against him. “‘As you know, they just lost the White House,’ [Trump] said of Biden, rewriting history as he teased the prospect that he will run again in 2024. ‘I may even decide to beat them for a third time,’ he said.” Associated Press, February 28th.Troubling for the ex-President was a CPAC straw poll that showed over 30% of Party did not want him to run in 2024, yet they also expressed strong support to continue his populist policies. Trump personally still defines the GOP. 

Mickey Edwards, quoted above, left the GOP after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. “‘The people at CPAC are living in an alternate reality in which facts don't matter. The Constitution doesn't matter. They have no principle except whatever their leader says,’ he said… Following a clip of the current CPAC chair, Matt Schlapp, speaking about election fraud, Edwards also said the conference is unrecognizable from when he was the chair. He said the values the conference prioritized during his tenure were not displayed in the current iteration…

“‘The party seems now to be completely following the lead of one man wherever he goes, which is the definition of a cult. The party's views that have matured over years and years are out the window. Now, all that matters is 'Trump is for this; we're for this,' and that includes denying truth, denying fact, denying reality,’ he said.” Newsweek, February 27th. Traditional Republicans are leaving the party in droves, but that does not seem to matter to the Party’s leadership. The life-sized golden statute of Mr. Trump (above) displayed at this year’s CPAC was for sale for $100,000. Golden Calf, anybody?

At CPAC, radical “stop the steal” Republican Senators like Missouri’s Josh Hawley and Texas’ Ted “Fled” Cruz made it clear that they were jockeying to ride the Trump’s coattails, to become his number two, into the 2024 presidential race. “Trump isn’t going anywhere,” declared Cruz, who was deeply insulted and marginalized by Trump in the 2016 primary election. What they are not saying is that they do not believe that Donald Trump will actually make it into the 2024 race. Having faced a severe and well-hidden COVID infection (lots of permanent damage), facing calcification of his arteries with terrible dietary habits resulting in borderline morbid obesity, an aging Trump, if he survives, is unlikely to be willing or able to face the rigors of another presidential election. And Cruz and Hawley are acutely aware of those facts. 

But shaming, banning and/or censuring Republicans voting or expressing their conscience – particularly GOP leaders like Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney and Nikki Haley – not only insures legislative gridlock at a Congressional level, expensive and prolonged litigation against voter suppression, further divisive polarization but also the alienation of those traditional fiscal conservatives who feel betrayed by a new GOP with no clear positive direction… only an angry litany of what they are against. As passionately as conspiracy theorists cling to the wild beliefs, as domestic terrorism from such extremists remains our most serious existential threat and as pretending our biggest problems (from COVID to climate change and racial inequality) do not really exist, each and every one of those purported axioms is unsustainable. Nothing they predict or believe will actually come to pass. 

And at each failed prognostication, a few more of the new populist adherents will fall off the wagon. As younger, better educated voters ascend to power – the ones who actually have to live with climate change and who have grown up with friends of color – the GOP will lose further traction. White traditionalists are now a subsiding minority. New parties may form. If those populists see their power further eroding, they might just foment a civil war and fight to the death. Trying to build a future based on excluding as many opposing voters as you can is hardly sustainable or a solid basis for expanding what is rapidly becoming the negative party of scapegoats and … yesterday. It is not a question of “if,” only a question of “when.”

In the meantime, even the best laid plans of mice and men – or Joe Biden – are still met with international skepticism: “[It’s] increasingly clear that Biden cannot simply sweep up the broken diplomatic china and restore the world order that reigned when he was vice president. There is one simple reason: Allies know Trumpism could always come back, either in a 2024 bid by Trump himself or from another presidential hopeful offering a similar pitch.” Washington Post, February 27th. It takes time… and time that we just might not have.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we have been here before, but too many Americans believe that they can defy history, nature and change… although that has never ever happened.