GOP is going there already
Republicans have a long history of using keywords that mean something other than their literal definition. For those who haven’t caught on just yet, “unity” is definitely a big one. You might think it means Republicans and Democrats deciding that love of country is more important than political views and work to a common goal, but Republicans just mean Democrats should let them do whatever they want, whenever they say it. That’s why the MAGA movement, which wouldn’t exist without the key component of “owning the libs” and lashing out at people that won’t subscribe to Donald Trump’s childish worldview (even if the people in question happen to be conservative Republicans), has all of a sudden embraced unity in their sloganeering.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. To the surprise of pretty much no one who’s been paying attention since 2016 – besides those on the payroll of CNN, Donald Trump’s “unity speech” ended with direct attacks on pretty much everyone of influence in the Democratic Party, as the guy yet again demonstrated he’s not up to the task of actually building a coalition and bringing people together. Despite President Biden’s calls to turn down the temperature of the rhetoric, the party has no intent of doing that – and it’s not just a case of Trump being forgetful, if we had any doubts.
At a Middletown, Ohio rally for Trump, a Republican official threatened there’d be a civil war if the Trump-Vance ticket lost in 2024. Not exactly the wisest thing to say if you want to put some distance between yourself and the Jan 6 insurrection, something that cost Republicans support two years ago. The fact is that the GOP’s brand is chaos, whether they like it or not, and they prove it on a daily basis – no matter how much they try to cover things up. They have a ticket led by a convicted felon and they’re not even pretending to care about civility anymore. This is why we need to keep them far from the levers of power when we vote for Kamala Harris on Nov 5, keep the Senate and flip the House.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making