The Grand Old Meltdown

[brooklynite]

Politico

Every fourth summer, a presidential nominating convention gives occasion to appraise a party for its ideas, its principles, its vision for governing. Recent iterations of the GOP have been easily and expertly defined. Ronald Reagan’s party wanted to end the scourge of communism and slay the bureaucratic dragons of big government. George W. Bush’s party aimed to project compassion and fortitude, educating poor Americans and treating AIDS-stricken Africans while simultaneously confronting the advance of Islamic terrorism. However flawed the policies, however unsuccessful their execution, a tone was set in these parties from the top-down. They stood for something manifest, even if that something was not always (or even usually) practiced by members of the party.

“If you think about the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution—they’re all about ideas. Parties were supposed to be about ideas,” said Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor and congressman who ran a short-lived primary against Trump in 2020. “John Adams was an ornery guy, but he believed in his ideas. On the other side, Thomas Jefferson, he certainly didn’t live up to the ideas he espoused, but shoot, at least he talked about them. Nowadays, it’s just regression to the lowest common denominator on everything. It scares me. You keep going this way of cult of personality, you will kill our Republic.”

It can now safely be said, as his first term in the White House draws toward closure, that Donald Trump’s party is the very definition of a cult of personality. It stands for no special ideal. It possesses no organizing principle. It represents no detailed vision for governing. Filling the vacuum is a lazy, identity-based populism that draws from that lowest common denominator Sanford alluded to. If it agitates the base, if it lights up a Fox News chyron, if it serves to alienate sturdy real Americans from delicate coastal elites, then it’s got a place in the Grand Old Party.

“Owning the libs and pissing off the media,” shrugs Brendan Buck, a longtime senior congressional aide and imperturbable party veteran if ever there was one. “That’s what we believe in now. There’s really not much more to it.”

[Alliepoo]

1. Yep. What Brendan Buck said.

That’s todays gop in a nutshell.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

2. The GOP is the party of unchained greed and always has been.

At the core of it is their hatred of taxes and authoritarian white power.

Everything else they say is just populist bullshit and lies.

Unfortunately for them, their bullshit machine is now totally out of control.


KY.......

[BComplex]

3. Again, adding Fox "news" to the mix as to whether something is important or not, credible or not...

That is fucking up this country and has to stop. It's like saying we have to run something by the National Inquirer to see if it's credible or important.

Fox is a cancer on our democracy. It's like toxic black mold; it starts with a little problem and destroys the whole thing.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

4. The GOP is a cult