The Republican Party must die
The flaccid resolution passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday, to condemn Donald Trump for his racist and misogynistic tweets against four women members of the House, was mounted in the place of a full censure resolution filed by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who called Trump’s comments “opprobrious.” A censure resolution would have been more serious, and would have placed Donald Trump historically where he deserves to be, next to that other bigoted president Andrew Jackson, who was himself the object of Congressional censure in 1834. “We should put him where he wants to be — with a president who was racist, who had slaves, and led to the Trail of Tears against Native American Indians,” Cohen said.
It is a feature of this Congress to adopt the more timid route, despite the fact that five venomously partisan resolutions for censure were adopted against Barack Obama by five different Republican congressmen between 2013 and 2016. Though the resolutions against Obama received no action, the attempts were outrageous. They were mounted simply because President Obama was trying to find alternate ways to bring healthcare to poor Americans, as the conventional route through congress had been barricaded by a hastily assembled but unmovable Republican redoubt.
It was during the passing of Tuesday’s resolution that Republican members tipped their hands, with their toxic objections, language and general grumbling. Representative Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.) moved to have Pelosi’s words taken down, a seldom invoked procedure that stopped the debate for more than an hour.
It is at this point, in the course of the composition of this article, that I decided I have finally had enough. Republicans harassed President Obama with five censures, with the endless challenges to the authenticity of his birth record, with obdurate blocks to his legislative efforts and lawful appointments, with their avowed policies, instituted by Mitch McConnell and others, of frustrating every effort of his presidency, without regard for whether or not that effort was in the best interest of the American people. Meanwhile they have prostrated themselves before Donald Trump, excusing his limitless expressions of hate, bigotry and divisionism with their obsequious, cringing acquiescence, by passing every piece of his pet legislations and fast tracking both of his Supreme Court nominations.
It is now time for the Republican Party to go. When a party violates the United States Constitution by persistently interjecting religion into its proceedings and decisions, it is time for that party to go. When a party ignores the depredations of the Russian government, a government that cynically and deliberately and successfully perverted the outcome of an American election, and has paved the way for them to do it again, it is time for that party to go. When a party, against the will of the majority of Americans, and in the name of power and profit, makes common ground with an entity like the National Rifle Association, which is devoted to the sale and promotion of weapons designed to murder human beings, it is time for that party to go. When a party has thwarted every effort and attempted to overturn the entire legacy of a previous president, to deprive millions of Americans of their healthcare, merely because that president is black, it is time for that party to go.
In Germany it is a jailable offense to extol Hilter, employ the Nazi salute, deny the holocaust, carry a swastika flag or be a member of the Nazi party. It’s time to devise similar laws against extolling Trump, wearing a MAGA hat, denying global warming and being a member of the Republican Party.
America does not need to be a two party state. There is nothing gained by it and everything lost by it. While this may seem an extreme solution to some of you, if you look back into history, if you see where the Republican Party has come from and what it has become today, and extrapolate where it is headed, you have to conclude that, next to Climate Change, the Republican Party is the greatest threat facing Democracy in America today. Democrats must be in control again in 2020 in order to crush the Republican Party once and for all time. Once returned to power, we must never relinquish it again.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.