Last week Republican House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy went to Mar-a-largo and knelt down to kiss Donald Trump’s ring, at least I think it was his ring.
It pleased most Republican voters. A Vox/DFP poll released January 11th found that 72% of them still question the legitimacy of the presidential election, and half of them opposed Joe Biden’s Inauguration.
Quinnipiac University poll taken around the same time found similar results. Worse, a You/Gov poll found that 45% of all Republicans backed the storming of the Capitol.
Most people think Trump made the Republican Party into what it has become. I think Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude described the relationship more accurately when he said, “Donald Trump didn’t deform the Republican Party. The Republican Party vomited up Donald Trump.”
Now that he is gone he is still with them because his disdain for the Constitution and his autocratic view of the presidency fit their own anti-government views perfectly.
So here is the truth about Republicans who never tell the truth. They have no desire to protect and defend the Constitution and no interest in preserving our democracy.
Their idea of defending the Constitution is to raid the Capitol, take over Congress, and threaten to kill the Vice-President of the United States and the Speaker of the House.
These are not people who are going to work with Joe Biden when he invited every American in his Inaugural Address to do what Americans have done in the past: “…come together to carry all of us forward.”
He was not asking Republicans to support all his policies. He was asking them and all of us to care enough about our country to work together to solve our problems.
That is how we can begin to repair our broken social contract and embrace the values of truth, liberty, and justice for all that have kept us going because we never gave up on them.
There may be a handful of Republican Senators who are willing to join President Biden and the rest of us, serious differences in points of view notwithstanding, but they are a decided minority. There are even fewer in the House.
At the moment Trumpism controls most Republicans. The only way that can change is if a sufficient number of Republican voters stop voting these people into office.
It’s what I call consequential voting, a simple concept wherein voters make an honest assessment of the consequences of their vote before they cast it.
That assessment is based on a basic question: “Will my vote be good for the country and our democracy?”
The time when Republicans voted Republican because they were Republican is over, and the reason is that being a Republican doesn’t mean what it used to.
Republicans used to be conservatives who promoted limited government and personal responsibility. They didn’t want to destroy the government. They wanted to make it work efficiently based on conservative principles.
That has changed. Most Republicans today, at least those in control, don’t care about government. They just as soon it fail as not since they hate everything about government, unless, of course, they are in power and can use it for their personal advantage.
This is why in 2020 the Republican National Committee decided to forego adopting a Party Platform and, instead, called on all Republicans to “enthusiastically support the president’s America-first agenda” that had nothing to do with offering conservative solutions to the nation’s problems.
The future of the Republican Party depends on its voters seeing what has happened to their party and then refuse to support ideologues who pretend to be conservatives by not voting for them.
This has to happen at the state level as well as the federal. Republicans in several states are already busy submitting bills to limit mail-in voting, apparently because it worked too smoothly and flawlessly in 2020 for their taste. Their way of protecting the integrity of the vote is to prevent Democrats from voting which is their version of free and fair elections.
Consequential voting is not rocket science. It’s common sense. It’s about thinking before you act as a way for the Republican Party to stop throwing up people like Donald Trump.
Moreover, it is good not only for Republicans. They need it because it’s an emergency for them, but it is also good for all of us, Democrats, Republicans, independents, now more than ever.
To say the survival of democracy in America is at stake may sound too melodramatic, yet, it is exactly the threat Republicans pose. They are shaking the foundations of our way of life from within, something that has never happened before. It’s not easy to believe, but believe it we must.
But here is the irony of our dilemma. The quality of our collective future depends on the threat our nation is facing being defeated by the very people who allowed it to take root in their party in the first place.
In short, conservative Republicans must take back control of their party or, if they cannot do that, then destroy it and start over.
The rest of us must help and encourage them in the limited ways available to us. It’s their fight, but one thing we can do is to commit ourselves to consequential voting to demonstrate that we are only asking them to do what we are willing to do ourselves.
linnposts.com 
Jan,
I love your opening sentence, suggesting as it does an allegiance to Trump “the kingmaker” that goes to a very personal level for some!!
The rest of your post is a reminder to all who read it that the Republican party has been “hoisted by its own petard.”
Keep speaking truth to the cowards who make-up most of that party…..
Bill Blackwell
I figured if anyone would get my not quite pun-like wording, it would be you. Overall, I am hoping the blog gets a hearing among silent Republicans who have not yet fallen head and shoulders into cowardice.
well said. The ring actually looked like his ass, but he did not care. I heard one sensible republican worry that paying homage to trump out of fear, which it is, will transcend into how to vote on legislation, which we should all fear.
Guy, I think Republicans who fear Trump have probably been cowards all their lives. They are hopeless because they are useless.
Jan, again, another masterpiece in clarity about today’s republican party. Your observation about “consequential voting” has gone unnoticed by today’s conservatives and republicans. Only selective “education” by “good” people will be able to change just a very few conservatives in today’s world. To them, most are entrenched in the concept that “the ends justify the means”. Wisdom, common sense and consequential voting are as foreign to them now as aliens from another planet. But to your broader point, “conservative republicans must take back control of their party or, if they cannot do that, then destroy it and start over” is also right on! As you know, I still cannot figure out why they have not already done so. I think our friend Wally had the answer. When we would debate and discuss groups that somehow got permeated by bad actors or evil, corrupt, self-serving interests, he would strongly advise us that “we good people” can never “change” these groups from the outside. He would tell us repeatedly that bad companies, bad governments, bad religions, bad political parties, and yes bad people, “must always change from within”, or they will not change at all. We have been trying to change the republican party for years. And look where that has gotten us. This is where we are today with republicans. But because of 73 million Trumpublican voters, and their recent increase in power in the House of Representatives, their leadership still believes they will regain control in 2 and 4 years. So, we “consequential voters” can only as you suggest: “must help and encourage them in the limited ways available to us. It’s their fight”. I am very hopeful that we can make some significant progress in the meantime. But “their fight” is going to have consequences to us all.
John, I could have included several points you made in my blog. They are spot on, as Wally would have said. And I remember him saying many times precisely what you noted he said. He was right, of course, but we can try to talk to those who have abandoned reason altogether, especially since “the end justifying the means” thinking is, as you note, so prevalent among Republicans. Many thanks for your comment.
Amen Jan, It’s pretty frightening when they are more critical of Liz Cheney than Marjorie Taylor Greene. As long as Republicans don’t destroy the country, I say let them eat each other. It will just help keep the Democrats in power.
Wilbur, I truly believe history will show that what we are witnessing is the rise of fascism in America in the form of the Republican Party. History’s story is that this is the way fascism works. It doesn’t take over in a coup, though that can happen, it rises up from within an existing political movement. It is the Republican Party this time. I hope they do devour one another if conservatives cannot regain control.