Republicans Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

(Actually, I had no idea about the song, but it was the headline on a sports site about eight years ago, when the new Dodgers ownership was making many roster changes. So I figured that it must be a song, and I just looked it up, and there it was. 🙂 )

This could actually work to our advantage, albeit being very unsettling at this point. The Republicans are either so drunk on the success they are having in purging every dissenting voice from their party, or they are just fanatics who cannot stop themselves, and are giving full rise and exposure to their fanaticism.

They remind me of the way that the cheap slasher horror pictures go. The husband or the new boyfriend seems to be okay, albeit sometimes strange and temperamental. By the end of the movie, he has lost any vestige of normality, and is swinging an axe, and screaming insanely. In the case of the movies, it is the filmmakers trying to provide cheap thrills for a built-in audience, or simply losing control of the plot, and not having anywhere else to go. In the case of Republicans, it seems to be simply feeling free to unleash their inner demons of hate and destruction, with no need or ability to disguise it.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is getting headlines every day. She is a combination of stupidity, ignorance, and hate. She is piling up a lot of donation money from Republicans who love it, just like they love Trump. But she is also making it easy for Democrats to make her the poster person for that party. Republicans have tried to do that to AOC, but while I am not a fan, there is no comparison, as AOC is rational, and does not hate various ethnic groups, or carry a gun around to scare people, nor indeed does AOC harass MTG.

There are other wackos in the Republicans’ ranks, like Gosar and Cawthorn and Gaetz, but Gaetz will likely be going to prison, even in Florida, which is not a good look. There are others who pop up in the House hearings. They cannot stop themselves from getting up and uttering inanities and conspiracy theories on the House floor. There will be House hearings on the January 6 insurrection, whether or not there is a bipartisan Commission. And we may well find out what actual roles those people played in the vicious and dangerous riot. And hopefully there will be extensive television coverage, and people will at least learn important facts at these hearings, if not see all of them live.

Among the comparatively more sober Republican members of the House and Senate, there is an acceleration of their absolute refusal to compromise, offer any halfway reasonable policy, or even try to fake any appearance of moderation. In short, they are acting as if they know they will win the House in 2022, at which time they will not only stop any Democratic policy proposals from being passed , but they will pass all sorts of repressive bills, and they will hold endless hearings against Democrats, as they did with Benghazi.

And they might be right, and they might be playing with house money, with a surety of winning Congress, which should all frighten us. But they could be wrong; and what they are doing now, is going to make it even more apparent what Republican control will look like. They think that people are already yearning for it, but they are wrong. The question is whether the Democrats can show enough voters what is at stake in this midterm election. Republicans are helping in that regard.

It looks like McConnell is going to revert to his timeworn tactic of filibustering every bill, since he currently does not hold the power to keep them from the floor. It does seem that Manchin, at least, is not at all happy with the Republicans preparing to filibuster the Bipartisan Commission bill. I don’t know why this surprised him. Maybe it will finally cause him and Sinema to override the filibuster on H.R.1. I would have thought that Republicans would allow the Commission, giving themselves cover on H.R.1, but they don’t appear willing or able to stop themselves from trying to block everything.

They won’t compromise on climate, or guns, They want to stop unemployment benefits, saying that they are keeping the masses from getting back to work. They are taking away people’s right to vote; of course, the goal there is to stop them from voting against them. They are supporting so many insane recounts, that they are making it a serious question as to whether we can ever have another fair election. They think that maybe this will discourage the masses from voting at all, but it may not be true.

There now are a number of people suggesting that if the Republicans take either chamber of Congress, much less both of them, that they will simply not certify the election of a Democratic President. If that does not get Democrats to vote, nothing will.

Democrats have many lines of campaign attack. This is not going to be 2010, when all the attacks were leveled by Republicans, and President Obama did not seem inclined to campaign strongly for downticket Democrats, or even to criticize the Republicans. Hopefully, we have enough money to spend, as against the Republican billions, so that compelling ads making it clear to the voters what is at stake, can be all over the airwaves.

I wonder what corporate money will do. Will they want Republicans back in power, or at least a stalemate where nothing gets done? DeSantis in Florida is already trying to pass laws which stop what the Right calls “censorship,” i.e., not allowing every single racist, anti-semitic, crackpot conspiracy ad to run on social media. I would not think that the social media would like that, but who knows what to expect from them. GDP is now estimated to go up to around 6%, whereas Trump’s GDP was never out of the mid-2% range. Do corporations want to have the economy stalled, maybe leading to a Republican win in 2024, and inevitable declining growth?

So we will see obviously. But right now the Republicans resemble a group of people who cannot wait to get their radical agenda up to full steam, not just on the state levels, but nationally. They are excited about the end of abortion rights, but most voters want to keep Roe v. Wade as law, they simply made a terrible mistake in not connecting it to keeping Democrats in control of appointing Supreme Court Justices. Texas is trying to make ownership of handguns legal for anyone, without background checks or training.

I cannot even imagine the landscape that Republican leaders are envisioning, but they are certainly thinking that they will be far removed from it, in their large gated mansions. We will see if they can confuse and misdirect and frighten and brainwash people into giving them what they want, or whether enough will figure this out, and rise up to stop them. They are certainly providing prospective voters with all the facts and trends they need.