As the gale-force exhalation of held breath after the inauguration subsides, among the myriad questions is the near- and long-term future of the Republican party. Having lost the popular vote for the Presidency in seven of the last eight contests and most recently turned the trifecta of Presidency, House and Senate (albeit a tie), the Grand (sic) Old Party clearly needs to revisit the “autopsy” it conducted in 2012 in the wake of Obama’s second substantial victory.
Regrettably, the ability, let alone will, to honestly do any such thing is an open question. This is, after all, the party home to 139 Representatives, over half its caucus, who voted less than 24 hours after the deadly the storming of their place of business by the beloved of Trump seeking to overturn the results of November’s election. This is the party of the newly elected Marjorie Greene of Georgia, a Q-believer who has held among other bizarre propositions that Charlottesville was “an inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites,” that Blacks are “held slaves to the Democratic Party,” and that “the most mistreated group of people in America are white males.” (Not content to rest on the notoriety of this nonsense, Rep. Greene filed articles of impeachment against President Biden on the day after his inauguration.)
The big Republican tent also manages to find room for the likes of Senator Lindsey Graham whose quick turn from rude dismissal of Trump to unrestrained sycophancy was head-spinning to the point of nausea and who said, arguing against post-presidential term impeachment, that it would open the door to impeaching slave-owning George Washington. Room enough also for newly elected Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado who has introduced bills to prevent allocation of funds for the country to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord or the World Health As the As the gale-force exhalation of held breath after the inauguration subsides, among the myriad questions is the near- and long-term future of the Republican party. Having lost the popular vote for the Presidency in seven of the last eight contests and most recently turned the trifecta of Presidency, House and Senate (albeit a tie), the Grand (sic) Old Party clearly needs to revisit the “autopsy” it conducted in 2012 in the wake of Obama’s second substantial victory.
Regrettably, the ability, let alone will, to honestly do any such thing is an open question. This is, after all, the party home to 139 Representatives, over half its caucus, who voted less than 24 hours after the deadly the storming of their place of business by the beloved of Trump seeking to overturn the results of November’s election. This is the party of the newly elected Marjorie Greene of Georgia, a Q-believer who has held among other bizarre propositions that Charlottesville was “an inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites,” that Blacks are “held slaves to the Democratic Party,” and that “the most mistreated group of people in America are white males.” (Not content to rest on the notoriety of this nonsense, Rep. Greene filed articles of impeachment against President Biden on the day after his inauguration.)
Special suite accommodations await House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who while attributing some blame for the insurrection to Trump reserved another portion for “everybody across this country.” Responsibility aside, McCarthy decries impeachment proceedings as contrary to “bringing our country together . . . on a path towards unity and civility” (characteristics cheerfully trampled over the past four years).
Space is available even outside Washington for such as the elders of the Republican Party in Arizona who pushed the censure of the state’s current Republican Governor as well as, for good measure, Cindy McCain and Jeff Flake, neither of whom presently hold elected office, but both of whom have had the temerity to offer some criticism of their fellow GOP party members.
Examples of this utter foolishness abound up and down the Republican ranks. Yet for all its mendacity the party manages to cling to power and the means to preserve it. For the great majority of Congressional Republicans, there is evidently no higher purpose, no goal greater than the preservation of elected power by any means available including, just for example, voting hindrance and grotesque gerrymandering. But as evidenced by Democrats losing 13 House seats to Republicans in November, there is a substantial portion of the electorate willing to play the patsy in this running game of three card monte and continue to blindly support their Congressperson even if to their own detriment.
Still, for all its failings and failures, the prospects of the demise or even substantial diminishment of the Republican party should occasion some unease. While there is unquestionably satisfaction to be had for those on the Left observing the trials and tribulations of those on the Right, a longer historical view might suggest the country would not be well served by the demise of one of its two major parties.
Since its founding, a two-party system of government has been this country’s norm. Which should hardly be surprising as power in the British Parliament, the government most familiar to our founders, had been a contest between Whigs and Tories for a hundred years before the U.S. Constitution. Since then, the names have changed -- the present Republican Party born in 1854 included supporters from the Whig and Democratic parties, while today’s Democratic party has its roots in the Democratic-Republican Party of Jefferson and Madison. And likewise, the two parties have alternately fought both sides of the great issues of the day, perhaps most notably states’ rights. (A pre-Civil War southern Democratic would be dumbstruck by the current hegemony of the Republican party in that region.)
For all that, the country has made at least uneven progress for over two hundred years with two parties regularly contesting control of the executive and legislative branches. So it should be a matter of concern to all that the internecine conflict among Republicans threatens not only the diminishment or even dissolution of the party and with it any reasonable prospects of effectively addressing the myriad challenges we face. Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum is as true today as when postulated by Aristotle over two millennia ago. And while the Republican party offers much to criticize, it admits no comparison to its potential successor, the Patriot Party headed by one Donald J. Trump.
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